


the ghost and the garden

by clachnaben



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Father-Daughter Relationship, Found Families, Grief/Mourning, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Moving On, Pavetta of Cintra, Post-Canon, blood families, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:14:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28593078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clachnaben/pseuds/clachnaben
Summary: “Then, to business,” Emhyr said, moving the papers in front of him to the side of his desk with a heavy thwack, and leaning back in his chair. “A ghost has been sighted in the east wing of this palace. When approached, it apparently summons wraiths to defend itself. The court’s official augurers have determined this is an ill omen, and the court may not withdraw to winter in Nilfgaard proper until the spirit has been cleansed. I require a witcher to rid us of this spectre.”“Huh,” Geralt said. He hadn’t known what he was expecting, but this was proper witcher’s work. “What kind of ghost?”
Relationships: Emhyr var Emreis/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 36
Kudos: 238





	the ghost and the garden

**Author's Note:**

> This is based purely on Witcher 3 canon, and while I’ve read the wikis for the books and other games, if I didn’t like the canon or it was contradictory I’ve changed it. If something here differs from the lore you know, please just assume I’ve changed it on purpose. 
> 
> thank you to my alpha readers [greedy_dancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greedy_dancer), [torigates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/torigates) and [anoneknewmoose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoneknewmoose) for helping make this much better than its first draft

Oxenfurt was practically crawling with Nilfgaardian soldiers when Geralt rode into town hoping for a hot meal, a bath, and some nice easy town contracts for a week. He’d spent the last week taking Nilgaardian florens from foremen working on draining Velen’s endless supply of swamps and bogs and was tired of fucking mud. Now that Emhyr had let the students back into the university, there’d be more people to beat at gwent. It was the closest thing Geralt could get to a real holiday, and he thought he deserved it.

The notice board had a smattering of notes about work duties and paying homage to the emperor and various other things Geralt didn’t care about and then he skimmed over his own name on one of them and had to double take to read it thoroughly. 

_The presence of the witcher called Geralt of Rivia is requested at the Palace at Vizima by Emperor Emhyr var Emreis, Deithwen Addan yn Carn aep Morvudd, and his heir Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon var Emreis, The Lady of Space and Time. A contract is offered which only his skill and expertise may render complete._

and then below it, not in a scribe’s practiced hand but the faster scrawl of someone in a hurry, was another notice:

_A reward of no more than twenty florens is offered for any citizen able to provide information leading to contact with the witcher called Geralt of Rivia.  
signed, Ronan var Menzier, Commander of the Nilfgaard Garrison, Oxenfurt_

Well, someone certainly wanted to get in touch with him. It wasn’t Ciri or Yennefer, either of them would have just teleported to wherever he was and then dragged him to wherever they wanted him to be. Anyone else would have just left a message in Novigrad with Dandelion and Zoltan and waited for him to pick it up. So that left Emhyr leaving vague notices for him anywhere Nilfgaard had a foothold. Which was strange and a little weird, but so entirely out of character it must be urgent. 

He sighed and took the notice down, tucking it inside his shirt. Well, he could get the hot bath and meal for free in Vizima he supposed, even if it was another two days' ride. 

He turned Roach around with his heels, and pointed her towards the garrison. If he was lucky, the commander might give him those florens just for saying his own name. 

The garrison commander didn’t give him the florens, since, as he fairly pointed out, he was already in communication with Geralt of Rivia and hardly needed information about where he was, such as 'right in front of him' and 'already on the way to Vizima like the damn notice asked', but he did let Geralt eat in the officer’s mess and someone fed and watered Roach. The Nilfgaardians weren’t eating any better than the local people, so it was just flatbread and soup so peppery he sneezed in it twice, but it was hot and he hadn’t had to take it off a corpse to eat it, which was more than he normally got. 

The notice hadn't said to _hurry_ so Geralt let himself take four days to get to Vizima rather than two. He caught himself thinking about stopping at a barber for a shave and grumpily didn't go out of spite. Cirilla'd had more than her fair share of lice and fleas in her life, and he didn't _care_ about Emhyr's opinion of him. The only other person whose opinion mattered was Yennefer, and she was in Toussaint, drinking his wine and trying and failing to strike any fear of sorceresses into B.B. 

He arrived at the palace just as the sun was setting, most of the city either closing up or getting ready for the evening trade, and a guard stopped him just as he rode Roach into the perimeter of the royal quarter. 

“Halt, who goes there?” he said in Common, and then repeated it in Nilfgaardian. Geralt rolled his eyes and pulled the notice, now quite crumpled, out from his shirt. 

“I’m Geralt of Rivia,” he said, while the guard read the notice. “The emperor has a job for me?”

“Yes, of course,” the guard said officiously, handing the notice back. “Right this way ser.”

“You don’t have to call me ser,” Geralt started, but of course the guard was already marching away, just expecting Geralt to follow him, and he had to tap Roach on the side to get her going. They ended up in one of the palace’s fancier stables, surrounded by horses so overbred Geralt could practically _smell_ the pedigree. He brushed Roach down while Emhyr’s chamberlain stood outside the stall and complained about how long he was taking, which made him give Roach more attention than he’d given her since she was foaled. She’d never been so well groomed. 

“Be good,” he said lightly as he left, smacking her on the rump. She snorted, and ignored him for the oats. Thrown over for food, typical. 

“The gentleman will now be appropriately dressed,” Mererid said superciliously, when Geralt stepped out of the stall.

“What’s wrong with how I’m dressed?” he said, looking down at himself. True, he had mud splattered up to his arse, but that was just what happened this time of year. He even liked this gambeson and made an effort to keep it relatively clean. You could still see the stripes and everything. 

“The gentleman is very funny,” Mererid said, with a sniff. “Follow me.”

The chambers they’d set aside for him were a fucking mile away, and Mererid walked slower than a dog with no arse. But eventually Mererid left him in the rooms with strict instructions that he would be collected in a few hours. At least there was a bath, still steaming, and clothes laid out for him, the same style he’d worn when Emhyr had asked him to find Ciri. Gods, it was only a year ago. Time had always been slippery for him, but it felt like a decade. 

He cleaned himself off with a cloth, no point in wasting the water just loosening the dirt up, before getting in the bath and laying in it till it was completely cold. If he was getting bathed and clothed on Nilfgaard’s coin he was going to damn well enjoy it. 

Someone knocked on the door, but Geralt didn’t move out of the bath. His steel sword was within arm’s reach, and he didn’t hear or smell anything that would require the silver one. And there was a dressing screen between him and the door, so Mererid wouldn’t even get an eyeful. 

“Yes?” he said, when the door scraped open. 

“I thought I smelled an unwashed witcher in the hall,” a familiar voice said playfully from the other side of the screen. Geralt felt a smile split his face. Ciri had found him. “Are you decent?” she asked. 

“Not in the slightest,” Geralt said unapologetically, and heaved himself out of the bath, water splashing on the floor. He started drying his hair and tied a towel around his waist, stepping around the screen. Ciri had seen all the rest. 

She was standing in front of the chair hung with the clothes Mererid had left for him, hands on her hips. He’d thought maybe Emhyr would have had her in dresses, but she had on black hose, and a long Nilfgaardian surcoat over it, black embroidery on black fabric. Her only ornamentation was a belt knife and a big gold necklace, a square sun pendant hanging at the centre.

“Never thought I’d see you in court clothes,” she said, raising an eyebrow when he picked up the clean white undershirt left for him. 

“Hmm,” he said, and kept dressing. Ciri looked away when he put on his braies and hose, but didn’t leave the room. 

“What do you know about this contract Emhyr wants to give me?” he asked, when she’d turned back around. He wanted to distract her from watching him try and put on a doublet. 

“Probably not much more than you,” she said. “The court’s been talking about some kind of ill omen appearing around the palace last week, but I didn’t see it, and everyone thinks it’s inappropriate to actually tell me anything.”

“You didn’t ask Emhyr?” Geralt asked. “Doesn’t sound like you.”

“Pfft,” Ciri said. “I asked him last week, but he said he wanted to send for you and we would wait until you arrived. Where were you? I spoke to Yennefer by megascope, but she said you hadn’t been in Corvo Bianco for weeks.”

“Velen mostly,” Geralt said, sitting down to put on his boots. “Your father’s got half an army set on draining the swamps.”

“Bet the Water Hags don’t like that,” Ciri said, with a snort. Geralt grunted in agreement. He had a couple newly healed wounds that were evidence of _that_. 

“Plenty of work for a witcher,” he said. “And B.B. doesn’t need me at Corvo Bianco to plough the fields.”

“I suppose,” Ciri said doubtfully, but then Mererid opened the door to the rooms, bowing deeply when he saw Ciri. 

“Your highness,” he said. “The Emperor has requested the presence of the witcher.”

“Thank you Mererid,” Cirilla said. “I’ll take him through. Could you have someone bring some wine?”

Mererid bowed again. 

“Yes, your highness,” he said, and backed out of the room. 

“Hmm,” Geralt said. “Wish I could get him to do what I say like that.”

Cirilla grinned, her familiar brilliant fun-loving smile, the one that had preceded all their best adventures. 

“Perks of the job, I guess,” she said. Geralt followed her down the hall and past the wary guards stationed outside Emhyr’s door. They would have stopped him on his own, but they let Ciri past with barely a blink. 

“Ah, Cirilla,” Emhyr said when they entered, without looking up from his desk. “I expect you requested wine for our guest.”

“Mererid is sending someone,” she said. Foltest’s former rooms had been transformed even further since Geralt’s last visit, and Emhyr’s suite now had a sumptuous sitting room alongside his sturdy desk, and, through an open doorway, Geralt could see a bedroom containing a truly massive bed. And everywhere, the black sun. It was stamped into the chairs, and embroidered onto the curtains, picked out in gold leaf on the centre of the table, even the walls were painted in a tiny repeating pattern, the rays of the sun interlocking to cover the whole expanse. 

Ciri sat, one leg crossed over the other, one arm resting on her knee. She wasn’t his little girl anymore, the headstrong warrior who would rush into any battle with just her sword and a grin. He sat and braced his elbows against his legs. Emhyr didn’t look up from the paper he was writing at, his quill scratching away. Geralt could smell the ink, and the human scent of Emhyr’s sweat, the faint aroma of food as if he had eaten at his desk recently. 

A maid, dressed all in black, brought a tray of wine glasses, each glass individually edged in gold, and Mererid poured a rich red wine, the smell of it rising off the pour like a warm stew. Geralt let himself smell it without drinking for a long moment, and savoured the first sip. It had a lovely softness to it, and a pleasant earthiness, a nice slow-rolling stone aftertaste. 

“Hmm,” he said happily. Emhyr looked up, setting his quill down and raising an eyebrow. 

“How fares Corvo Bianco?” he asked, without preamble. Geralt lowered his glass warily, Cirilla watching them both over the rim of her glass. 

“Fine,” Geralt said slowly. 

“I understand you have had your first grape harvest. How long do you plan to age the bottles?” Emhyr said, for all the world like he was interested in the minutia of running a minor estate in Toussaint. Hell, knowing how Emhyr’s brain worked, maybe he was.

“Six months,” Geralt said. “And half the harvest to age another year.”

“Corvo Bianco produced excellent vintages in my father’s reign,” Emhyr said. “I have been lucky enough to sample some of the wine that survived the Usurper. It is gratifying to hear that it is producing again.”

“Thanks,” Geralt said, feeling a bit nonplussed. Emhyr had never made _small talk_ with him before. He glanced sideways at Ciri, who was hiding a smile behind her wine glass. 

“Then, to business,” Emhyr said, moving the papers in front of him to the side of his desk with a heavy thwack, and leaning back in his chair. “A ghost has been sighted in the east wing of this palace. When approached, it apparently summons wraiths to defend itself. The court’s official augurers have determined this is an ill omen, and the court may not withdraw to winter in Nilfgaard proper until the spirit has been cleansed. I require a witcher to rid us of this spectre.”

“Huh,” Geralt said. He hadn’t known what he was expecting, but this was proper witcher’s work. “What kind of ghost?”

Emhyr raised an eyebrow. 

“I was not aware there were multiple types of ghosts,” he said archly. “Does that affect the method of exorcism?” 

Geralt glanced sideways, catching Ciri’s eye. They’d exorcised their first ghost together when she was only thirteen, and she knew the different types of wraiths better than the back of her hand. 

“Yeah,” he said, after a long pause. “I’ll need to speak to the people who’ve seen the ghost, ask them questions. And I’ll have to look at the east wing, and maybe other parts of the palace.”

“I understand,” Emhyr said, taking a leaf of paper from a blank pile on his desk and scratching out his message, signing it and sealing it. “This will give you permission to move freely in the palace, and will require any who serve me to answer your questions in full.” He paused, and looked up, even as his hands pressed his signet ring into the soft black wax. “But you should be aware, I am of the sincere belief that the ghost is not a real apparition.”

“Not real?” Ciri asked. “Why did you ask for Geralt then? Sorry Geralt, not that I don’t want you here.”

Emhyr set the leaf of paper and its affixed seal aside to dry, and clasped his hands together on his desk, giving Ciri his full attention. 

“Think of the impact of the timing Cirilla,” he said calmly. “What is the consequence of the appearance of this spirit?”

"What, that you have to spend the winter in Vezima?" Geralt asked. "I don't think ghosts care about whether your toes get cold, your highness." 

Emhyr glared at him. “The court’s journey to Nilfgaard is not a question of comfort,” he said. “Cirilla must be anointed my heir on the day of the winter solstice at the altar of the Temple of the Sun, in the capital of her empire.”

“So?” Geralt asked, annoyed by Emhyr’s tone and unable to resist pricking at him. “Wait till the summer solstice, if the day’s that important. Or next year, if you have to.”

With a sudden scraping of his chair, Emhyr stood, striding across the room to the window, the sky dark outside. His face was impassive. The man never let any emotion show. But, perhaps only in his imagination, Geralt could the tight clench of his jaw, and the faint lines of tension at the corner of his eyes. He was angry. 

“Cirilla, you have chosen this path,” he said, ignoring Geralt, keeping his back turned to the both of them, his hands clasped behind his back. “You understand what is at stake, the foundations that must be laid, the work that must be done.”

Ciri looked at Geralt apologetically. “It has to be midwinter,” she said. 

“In Nilfgaard,” Emhyr said, finally turning away from the window. “The winter solstice is a day of celebration, of the victory of the sun over the dark. Cirilla, as their new empress, must symbolise to the people this victory, over the white frost that threatened all lands, over the North at the final end of this war, and over all darkness and ignorance. So, we must ask ourselves, who benefits from this delay?”

He turned to Ciri, seemingly expecting a reply. She had the determined, thoughtful expression on her face that Geralt recognised from her witcher lessons, the way she was always determined to prove to Vesemir that she did know the difference between a ghoul and an alghoul, that she could recite the recipe for noonwraith decoction, that she had paid attention in lessons and deserved his praise. It was strange to see it directed at Emhyr, like she wanted _his_ praise. 

“The Eastern Wind trade corporation underwrote the coronation ceremony,” Ciri said. “Would they benefit?”

Emhyr nodded. “However, their benefit would be momentary and fleeting. They have supported your ascension as an investment in future prosperity under a favorable empress. No, they stand more to lose than to gain from delay. We must think more widely. Remember, attacks do not usually approach from the front. An enemy who wishes to not make himself known must approach from the flank.”

“Like a foglet,” Ciri said. Emhyr shrugged elegantly. 

“If the analogy is apt, it may serve,” he said. “What other plans are affected by this delay? Consider all elements.”

“The coronation would be delayed,” Ciri said, setting her wine glass down and ticking her thoughts off on her fingers. “You would stay in the North. You’ll make the Temerians nervous, spending all this extra time in their palace. Morvran won’t take command of the army, because protocol won’t let you abdicate command if you’re actually in the area. It won’t affect the capture of Tretogor, the Pontor won’t freeze any faster just ‘cause we’re here. A risk of rebellion in the South maybe? You won’t have been there for years, by the end of this.”

“Hmm,” Emhyr said thoughtfully. “The Temerian angle is interesting. We must consider if their nerves will rise to such a level they will feel forced to act. I had considered their desire for an independent Temeria so strong they would not wish to disrupt the pact we have reached. But you are right, it is a factor that cannot be ignored.”

Ciri nearly glowed at that faint praise, clearly proud of herself for thinking of something Emhyr had not. 

“But you don’t think it’s the Temerians?” she asked. He shook his head. 

“As you say, they would only lose from my remaining in Vizima,” he said. “No, we must look inward. I had planned to give Morvran command of the army, for the final capture of Tretogor over the winter. It would demonstrate my trust in him, and make him a hero of the war.”

Ciri’s mouth was a thin line, like this was a familiar topic. “You want me to marry him,” she said. 

“I wish you to consider marrying him,” Emhyr corrected. “Your hand in marriage is a powerful negotiating tool. It would not be effective to commit yourself early, nor would it benefit you to pretend it is not a tool in your arsenal. Do you neglect your bow because you prefer your sword?” 

Ciri crossed her arms, but didn’t say anything else. Vesemir had often taunted her about her preference for her sword over her bow. She didn’t like to be told something twice.

“Morvran’s rise at court has not been without opponents,” Emhyr said thoughtfully. “We should consider if this is an attempt to threaten his status as a favorite. Cirilla, will you meet with Angared var Cynfir tomorrow? He is another potential candidate to consider for marriage, and the implication you favour other candidates may drive the plotters into the open.”

“Okay,” Geralt interrupted, before Ciri could reply, a little tired of getting talked around like he wasn’t even there. “None of this explains why you need me. Or why you think the ghost isn’t real.”

“If I am correct, and the spectre is false, I do not wish to inform the conspirator I have uncovered the falsehood,” Emhyr said, turning towards Geralt. “It is appropriate for me to hire a sufficiently skilled witcher to rid me of the ghost, so your presence will not disturb the unknown plotter. A witcher is paid to investigate the unexplained. You will investigate. If you uncover the mortal identity behind the ghost’s appearance, I am sure it will not be the first time you have been called to investigate the supernatural and found nothing but human avarice and cruelty.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. That wasn’t untrue. “You seem awfully convinced this ghost isn’t real.”

Emhyr paused, and looked at Ciri, just for a second, his eyes skittering away from her. He unclasped his hands and walked across the room, each of his footsteps steady. Not even Geralt’s senses could sense any nervousness on him, but when he paused, he looked up at Cirilla’s portrait, the one of her as a child, and touched his hand to his chain of office. 

“The spectre appears as a woman,” he said, looking up at the portrait. He took a breath. “To be precise, she appears as my late wife, Cirilla’s mother, the princess Pavetta of Cintra.”

“What!” Ciri exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “Why didn’t you tell me!”

“The first witness was a guard unfamiliar with Pavetta,” Emhyr said, not turning around, apparently unaffected by Ciri’s outburst. “He merely described a woman with blonde hair and courtly dress. I had only my suspicions. The second witness was a former Nilfgaardian envoy to the North, familiar with the Cintran monarchy and Pavetta herself. He confirmed my suspicions.”

“When?” Ciri demanded. Emhyr turned to face her. 

“Four nights ago,” he said. “If you will recall, I immediately requested you communicate with Yennefer of Vengerburg, to hasten Geralt’s arrival. He has arrived, and the investigation can begin.”

“But,” Ciri said, but Emhyr continued over her, looking directly at Geralt.

“It is true, is it not, that spirits are drawn to rise at the location of their death?” he asked. 

“Usually,” Geralt said slowly, suspicious that Emhyr was using him to prove a point but not yet sure what it was. “Sometimes places that were important to them when they were alive.”

Emhyr nodded. “Pavetta was the Crown Princess of Cintra, not Temeria. Vizima held no special place in her heart, and should not have a hold over her now. She died on the open sea, nowhere near this palace. There is no cause for her shade to come to us now.”

“But there are ways to move a spirit, and strong wraiths can travel long distances,” Ciri said forcefully, nearly cutting Emhyr off. She would know. When she was a teenager, they’d hunted the Wraith of Rosemark over nearly 30 leagues. But that was a little different, the Rosemark wraith had been dead only a few years, and powerfully charged with rage. Pavetta had been dead for nearly two decades, a long time for a wraith to linger and never show itself. 

Emhyr looked at him. “Is this true?” he asked. Geralt frowned. He could see the faint gleam of hope on Cirilla’s face, the optimism that her mother’s ghost was not lost through the veil. He couldn’t stand to crush that. 

“Yes, sometimes,” he said. “I’m not saying that’s what’s happening here.” He gave Ciri a sharp look. She should know better than to leap to conclusions when investigating. 

Emhyr crossed to his desk and took the leaf he had written on, with his official seal, and presented it to Geralt. He took it slowly, looking up at Emhyr.

“You will investigate,” Emhyr said imperiously. “And determine if the shade is false or real. Mererid will show you to the witnesses in the morning.”

“I’ll come-” Ciri started, but Emhyr cut her off with a sweep of his hand. 

“You will meet with Angared var Cynfir and ensure this is not an attempt to destabilise your reign,” he said. “You will not give the court any opportunity to think this is anything other than a minor haunting, easily solved by a master witcher.”

“But-” Ciri said, and then stopped when she saw Emhyr’s face. Geralt realised, with a jolt, that he was tired. 

“Cirilla,” Emhyr said, and that was enough to make Cirilla nod. 

“I understand,” she said. She gave Geralt a small smile, and he watched her leave, bemused. He’d never seen Ciri stand down from a fight without a good reason. 

“You will take the contract?” Emhyr asked, and Geralt nodded. 

“Yeah, I can look around,” he said. Emhyr sighed. 

“Then you are dismissed,” he said with finality. Geralt folded the paper with Emhyr’s signature and seal into one of his pockets, and took a final sip of wine before he left, just to make it clear he was leaving because he wanted to and not because Emhyr was telling him to. Ciri wasn’t in the hall, and Geralt went back to his chambers, turning over the conversation in his mind. The bed he’d been given was ludicrously huge and comfortable, and he fell asleep still thinking of the only time he had met Pavetta, and the strange path that night had set him on. 

&&&

In the morning, he left the fancy Nilfgaardian court clothes on a chair and put his armour back on, including strapping both swords to his back. He wasn’t running around after a suspected wraith without good silver and he had historically bad luck with palaces, hence the steel. Mererid sniffed disapprovingly when he saw him, but took him to the guardroom, where he could talk to someone who’d actually seen the ghost. 

The first witness turned out to be a private in the army, newly drafted out of Sodden and not even a proper Nilfgaardian. He’d clearly had to learn the language, but looked pathetically grateful when Geralt shifted the conversation into Common. 

“I was on patrol that night, you see?” he said, when they stepped outside the guardroom to talk and Geralt asked him what he’d seen. “We just do the outside of the palace grounds, the Emperor’s guards do the inside patrols.”

“Yes,” Geralt said impatiently. “And you saw something strange. Can you describe it? What it looked like, what it was doing, what it was wearing?”

“Well, to start with, I thought it was one of the ladies,” he said. “We’re not supposed to talk to them, so I stayed well back. Only it was night, and I was worried she was out on her own, so I got a little closer.”

Maybe he’d been genuinely worried, or maybe he’d thought to try and chat up a noble woman, it didn’t matter to Geralt. 

“What did she look like?” he asked. 

“Uh,” Stirk, the private, said. “She was blonde, with a long braid down her back. I’ve not seen any of the Nilfgaardian ladies with hair like that, they usually wear it up. And she was wearing a blue dress. All fancy like.”

“Okay,” Geralt said slowly, since that was about as helpful as a man with no arse. “What happened when you got closer?”

Stirk paled. “Wraiths, master witcher. Three of them, out of nowhere, screaming and screeching, like they do.”

“You’re sure they were wraiths?” Geralt asked, since sometimes normal people could get overexcited and call all kinds of things wraiths. Nothing was more embarrassing than chasing after some ‘wraith’ only to find it was a particularly loud cat stuck in a bucket, or local youths messing around in the woods after dark. 

Stirk nodded. “Yes, master witcher. I’m from Sodden, you see. After the war, the second one, the ghouls and such came to eat the dead, but afterwards, the wraiths, they was worse.” He gulped audibly. “We got good at knowing when they was coming, otherwise they’d take a big swipe out of you, and if there was lots, well, my village had a lot of folks die that way.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. People who lived near battlefields sometimes could get good at dealing with spectres and necrophages in their own way, but Geralt had visited too many villages where they were happy to pretend all the dead bodies piling up from a local wraith were just coincidence. “What did you do then?”

“Ran away screaming like the Graveyard Hag herself was after me,” Stirk said immediately. Geralt nodded. That was the correct and appropriate way for a human to deal with wraiths. This guy was growing on him. “I came and told the sergeant on duty what I’d seen. He said he’d have me whipped for bearing tales, but Georgi and Bolshoy went to check it out.”

“They didn’t come back?” Geralt asked, when Stirk paused. Stirk shook his head. 

“Uh, Georgi’s fine, but the wraiths killed Bolshoy. Sergeant didn't whip me after that,” he said. 

“Fair,” Geralt said. “Can you show me where you saw them?”

“Yeah, but I’ll have to ask my sargeant,” Stirk said. 

“Alright,” Geralt said. “Give him this, it’ll probably help.” He gave Stirk the sealed paper Emhyr had given him, which turned out to be a massive mistake. The sergeant was equal parts terrified and honoured to see Emhyr’s actual signature in his own hand, and came out of the guardroom to bow and scrape at Geralt and call him “the emperor’s personal servant” until Geralt had to clap Stirk on the shoulder and say “I’ll just take Stirk for a little walk then shall I?” and then hustle both of them out into the palace grounds as fast as he could. 

“Are you really the emperor’s personal servant?” Stirk asked, in his plodding Sodden accent, while he led Geralt through the tidy palace gardens. 

“Just a witcher,” Geralt said flatly. 

“It was here,” Stirk said eventually, stopping in a decorative garden surrounded by high square bushes. There was a dark blood stain on the paved path, and more mixed in the grass and mud around the path. 

Geralt got Stirk to show him exactly where he’d seen the blonde woman, and where each wraith had come from, and then sent him back to the guardroom. There was no point keeping him standing around, swallowing nervously and getting in the way. He crouched down next to the blood stain, feeling it with the tips of his fingers. It was completely dry, and nearly a week old. Blood could hold magic residue longer than earth or stone, but his medallion didn’t even twitch, and when he put one of the dry flakes to his tongue, it tasted only of old human blood. 

He slowly worked his way through the rest of the area in a spiral, staying close to the ground to not miss anything. The garden had a fountain in the centre, and it looked popular with the Nilfgaardian nobles staying in the palace; the ground around it was trodden with prints, both ladies’ lighter slipper marks and Nilfgaardian boots. He caught the scent of a couple people, but nothing distinct, just perfume and sweat. All perfectly normal human smells. Wraiths didn’t leave a scent, but they weren’t particularly tidy creatures. If they were rising in the same spot repeatedly, there’d usually be some nice and distinctive death and destruction, maybe some bones. 

Stirk had said nothing strange had been sighted in this part of the garden since his adventure, and Bolshoy’s unfortunate end. Geralt didn’t find anything to indicate a wraith had been in the area. Near the bushes, right at the edge of her perimeter, he found some deep gouges in the wet grass, like something had been dragged, but no magical residue or blood, and prints covered the gouges, so they were at least a few days old. 

He walked back to the fountain, leaning against the edge and crossed his arm, looking up at the palace. It was the east wing, mostly noble living quarters now. Under Foltest, his advisors had lived in this wing with their families. Geralt didn’t care much for buildings usually but Foltest’d had the dwarf guilds work on the palace when it was designed and it had surprisingly large windows. Someone could have maybe seen something out of those windows on the night Stirk had seen his blonde lady, but they would have had to be right at the window, in the middle of the night. Not likely. 

“Hmm,” he said to himself. Not a lot to go on. He’d have to talk to the other witness.

Emhyr had said the witness was a Nilfgaardian envoy, so he was probably a noble and Geralt couldn’t just go hunt him down. He went back to the main courtyard, off from Emhyr’s quarters, and watched people going in and out of his rooms for an hour or so, all smelling of perfume or blade oil or other normal noble things. Emhyr didn’t like mages, and Nilfgaardian mages tended to stay out of his way unless specifically requested. Geralt’s medallion didn’t even twitch. 

He’d played gwent in this courtyard a couple times in the last year, but no one approached him for a game. He kept his arms folded across his chest and his eyes focused on the hall that led to the east wing, mentally categorising the people coming and going. Might come in hand, knowing faces. The noon bell rang, and most of the courtyard emptied out, but Geralt stayed. He didn’t need to eat that regularly. 

Eventually, Mererid came and found him, coughing to announce himself.

“Yes?” Geralt asked, looking up at him. Mererid’s expression didn’t even change. 

“Ser Kelan var Giorsal, former Imperial envoy to the North, has made time in his schedule to speak with you,” he said pompously. “The gentleman will come with me.”

“This guy my second witness?” Geralt asked, trailing in Mererid’s wake. 

“Certainly,” Mererid said, and brought them to a halt in front of a set of doors. “The gentleman would do well not to embarrass the Emperor by acting the lout in the presence of Ser Kelan.” 

Geralt grunted. “Emhyr can embarrass himself,” he said, which just made Mererid grumble. Geralt ignored him and pushed open the doors, letting himself into the set of rooms. 

The suite was more colourful than most Nilfgaardian rooms Geralt had seen. The room's high windows were hung with blue curtains, and the tablecloth in the centre of the room was bright red. The black sun was everywhere, but so was the red tulip pattern Geralt had seen up and down the North his entire life. 

At the window, a man dressed in all black was sat at a round table, sipping at a small glass. He stood when Geralt entered.

"Ah, master witcher," he said, in smooth, Nilfgaardian-accented Common. "I am told you are dealing with our ghost!"

"I suppose," Geralt said. "You are?"

"Kelan var Giorsal, at your service," he said, bowing elegantly at the waist. When he stood, he was smiling easily, nearly smugly. He had a classic Nilfgaardian face, with a strong nose and well-groomed eyebrows over a full mouth, but he was starting to go grey at the temples. He probably thought he was handsome. Geralt thought he looked a bit _too_ smug for his tastes. 

“Geralt of Rivia,” he said. “I heard you saw the ghost.”

“Yes, four - no, five nights ago now,” Kelan said, shaking his head. “Terrible business. Can I offer you a drink?”

He held up a bottle, tipping it in Geralt’s direction. Geralt could smell the sharpness of strong liquor, and the herbal top note of nalewka. He shrugged. 

“Wouldn’t say no to a snifter,” he said. Kelan grinned, and poured them both a dram. Geralt knocked his back. It took a lot more than a drop like that to get him drunk, and he could smell how expensive it was. Kelan raised his eyebrows in surprise, and took a more delicate sip. 

“What can I help you with, master witcher?” he said, when they’d both put their glasses down. 

“I need some detail on the ghost,” Geralt said. “Can you describe when you saw it?”

Kelan sat down, leaning back in his chair, gesturing expansively. 

“I was at a small gathering that evening, with the lady Elianna var Cynfir. She takes her quarters in the east wing. It was after midnight I should say, quite dark outside, and I’d had a bit to drink, so I stepped out into the inner courtyard. Clear my head, you see?”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. 

“It was the funniest thing, I heard this strange sound, like a dog whining, and then when I looked up, there she was.”

“Where?” Geralt asked. 

Kelan paused to think. “Just inside the hall, under the archway.”

“Inside?” Geralt said. “You’re sure?”

Kelan nodded. “I’m certain. There was a green light under the archway, I remember.”

That would be the wraiths, Geralt bet. 

“What did the ghost look like?” Geralt asked. “Can you describe her?”

Kelan made a face of well-bred sorrow, the kind of face people made at funerals. 

“It was sorrowful to see her like that,” he said. “It was the Princess Pavetta of Cintra, as clear as day.”

“You knew her?” Geralt asked. “You’re sure it was her, you could swear to it?”

Kelan gave him an odd look, a sort of sideways suspicion. 

“I’ve been an envoy to the North for a long time,” Kelan said. “And before me, my father was envoy. I’ve spent time in every court of every kingdom in the North. But Cintra sticks in the mind. I was of an age with Pavetta, maybe a little older than her, when I went to stay with the court. I personally don’t think any Nordling woman holds a candle to a real Nilfgaardian maiden. But Pavetta, she was a rare beauty. Pale as snow, golden silk for hair, eyes like the blue pools of Kaedwen.”

Kelan paused, and looked out the window, apparently picturing a past Geralt couldn’t see. “Truly striking. She made quite an impression on me as a young man,” he said. He looked back at Geralt. “It was her. I am sure.” 

“What was she doing?” Geralt asked. “Did she move, or say anything? 

Kelan shook his head. “No,” he said. “She just stood there, gazing out, like some sort of - silent judgement.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. In his experience, wraiths didn’t judge anyone. They weren’t really human at all, just vessels for pain and rage. They didn’t have higher thoughts, like judgement or justice. They killed the innocent as easily as the guilty. “Can you show me where this happened?”

“Happily,” Kelan said. “Anything to get to the bottom of this.”

Geralt followed Kelan out of his rooms, and down the hall. It was only a short walk to the internal courtyard at the centre of the palace. Geralt noted vaguely it wasn’t far from Emhyr’s rooms. Closer than the fountain garden, where Stirk had seen the wraiths.

“Here,” Kelan said, pausing under the stone archway that looked out into the courtyard. “She was standing here.” 

“Thank you,” Geralt said, crouching to inspect the floor.

“I’ll leave the expert to his work,” Kelan said. Geralt didn’t look up as he walked away. His medallion wasn’t humming, but a very strong wraith should leave a magical aura. He ran his fingers along the stone floor and then licked them. Nothing, not even a hint of magic. It was weird. The light Kelan mentioned should have been the wraiths Stirk had seen, but Stirk had been attacked, or at least chased, and Kelan hadn’t. He’d walked back to his rooms cool as a snowman’s prick. 

“Hmm,” Geralt said to himself. He hated when monsters acted weird. It usually meant they’d be hard to kill, and he hated it when they were hard to kill. 

Just to be thorough, Geralt searched the whole corridor but found nothing odd. The walkway was in the centre of the palace and too well travelled to let any one scent dominate. He smelled plenty of nobles, and even scents that he knew well - he could have picked Ciri’s scent out drunk, blind and half-dead it was so familiar to him, but he also smelled Emhyr, the warm brandy smell of the wine he drank and the thicker smell of his body. None of it was useful though, just normal palace smells. The mortar in one of the walls had crumbled away between two stones, and left a faint trail where people had walked through and where someone had dragged something. 

He rubbed the mortar between his fingers, a little frustrated. Wraiths didn’t plan. They certainly didn’t cover their tracks. Humans could plan, could obfuscate, could outwit a witcher, at least for a while. But humans didn’t explain the wraiths Stirk had seen. This clearly wasn’t going to be simple. 

It was evening by that point, and Geralt went back to his rooms, where someone had laid out a meal and another bottle of the wine Emhyr had served him the night before. The food was cold, he had the impression it had been left out for his midday meal, but he mopped it up with bread and chased it down with the wine, savouring the taste. He’d have to ask Emhyr, or probably actually Mererid, for a bottle to take back to B.B. to get his thoughts.

He cleaned his blades, oiling his silver sword with wraith oil since it seemed relevant, checked his regular potions, and went out into the central courtyard to meditate. The ghost had only come out at night so far, and he wouldn’t be good to anyone asleep in a ridiculously pampered bed. Meditating meant he’d be alert enough if the ghost showed itself again. 

He settled down amongst the grass, angled towards the archway Kelan had seen the ghost in, hands on his knees and closed his eyes, finding the calm, centred place within him that meditating always reached. 

An indeterminate amount of time later, Geralt’s meditation was disturbed by a piercing scream. He was on his feet, silver sword in hand, before he was even fully alert, running towards the sound. He could hear the sounds of a fight, the screech of a wraith, and then he rounded the corner to Emhyr’s rooms and saw Ciri, illuminated by the light spilling out of Emhyr’s doorway, drawing her sword and running into the room. 

He charged into the room, already spinning into an attack, spearing a wraith through the middle of the skeleton. It screeched, nearly directly in his ear, and went immaterial. The room was a mess, furniture overturned, glass shattered on the floor, a dead guard lying in a puddle of his own blood, but Geralt dodged and saw Ciri flash between two wraiths, her sword shining brightly in the room’s weird light. 

“Ciri!” He shouted, and then threw down a magic trap, watching the purple lights rise up. “Yrden!”

Ciri flashed out of view and then appeared at his shoulder, the wall behind them, both of them with their swords up. 

“Where they hell did these come from?” Geralt spat angrily. He _hated_ wraiths. Ciri parried a wraith’s dive, and then stabbed it in the eye and wretched its head off. 

“I have no idea,” she shouted, over the sound of the two remaining wraiths’ screams. “I heard the guards shouting and came running. Where’s Emhyr?”

“No idea,” Geralt said, and then the last two wraiths came for them, phasing into materiality as soon as they passed into the Yrden trap. One went for him. He dodged the initial attack, and then came up behind it and cut its head off with a very satisfying crunch of bone. Ciri moved so fast he didn’t even see her initial movement, and then she stabbed her wraith from behind, kicking it off her sword with a solid thump. 

They formed up automatically, back to back, swords raised, even as the final wraith crumbled into bone dust and the Yrden trap faded out. The only sound was their heavy breathing. Geralt rolled his shoulders. That had been annoying, but he’d had worse just riding Roach between villages. 

“Where’s Emhyr?” Cirilla said, real nerves in her voice, sheathing her sword. Geralt kept his up, just in case. Ciri started overturning furniture, like Emhyr was going to appear from under the table. 

The door to Emhyr’s bedroom slammed open. Geralt hadn’t even realised it’d been shut, in the rush of the fight. Two guards stood in the doorway, swords up. They were too well-trained to tremble, but Geralt could smell their fear sweat. 

“Cirilla?” said Emhyr’s voice from behind the guards. “Guards, stand aside.”

“But sir-” said one of the guards, looking over his shoulder. Emhyr interrupted him. 

“The threat seems to have been neutralised by the Empress Apparent, Ser Fingal,” Emhyr said haughtily. “Your protection in this immediate instance no longer appears relevant. You may stand down.”

The guards seemed cowed by that, and stood aside, revealing Emhyr in a long black robe and no other ornamentation. He looked rumpled, like maybe he’d been dragged into the other room when the wraiths appeared. 

“What happened here?” he asked, crossing over the room, glass crunching under his feet. One of the guards hastily righted an overturned chair so he could sit. 

“I was hoping you could answer that,” Geralt said, sheathing his sword now he was happy the threat really was gone. 

“Geralt and I came running when we heard the scream,” Cirilla said, crossing the room and crouching down beside Emhyr’s chair, one hand on his shoulder, clearly checking for injuries. For a moment, he looked surprised, and then his face smoothed out into calm. 

“I am unhurt,” he said, placing a hand on top of hers. “I had dressed for sleep, and was finishing a final piece of correspondence at my desk when the wraiths appeared, and Ser Fingal acted quickly to remove me from the room and barricade the door of my sleeping chamber.”

More people were appearing in the doorway, drawn by the noise, including Mererid and a guardsman with fancy pips on his shoulder that Geralt assumed was the captain. Emhyr stood, letting Cirilla’s hand fall from his shoulders, a cool, regal mask settling over his expression.

“Ah, Captain Dolaish, excellent,” he said. “There has been an unfortunate and unconscionable attempt on my life. Ensure that Ser Fingal and Ser Aodhan received commendations for their quick thinking in the face of attack.” Emhyr turned and looked at the two men, who immediately stopped staring at the wreck the wraiths had left behind and squared up, their eyes looking unseeingly ahead like they were on parade. 

“Ser Fingal, Ser Aodhan, the black sun has shone on you tonight. Your courage most undoubtedly saved the life of your emperor, and for that I am grateful. You are relieved for the evening. Ensure you are restored to full fighting spirits for return to your posts tomorrow,” Emhyr turned to the captain, continuing to talk even as the guardsmen saluted. “Captain Dolaish, I am saddened to report that Ser Eoin gave his life in my defense.”

Geralt thought this was rather obvious, since they were all standing in a puddle of his blood and his corpse was lying against the wall, but apparently everyone needed to hear it spoken aloud. 

“I entrust you will oversee his posthumous commendation, and ensure his family recieve his full pension,” Emhyr said, to the still shocked captain. “Mererid will provide his family with an additional gift of 500 florens, as thanks for his personal service to the imperial family.”

Mererid deeply. “Your grace,” he said. 

“I would like the family to recieve a personal gift from the imperial treasury as well,” Emhyr said, this time to Mererid. “Something suitably pawnable, should the family feel it is necessary.”

“It will be done, your grace,” Mererid said. 

“Cirilla, Geralt - do you expect the wraiths to return?” Emhyr asked. Cirilla shook her head. Geralt shrugged. 

“We killed the ones here. I still don’t know where they came from, I’ll need to investigate,” he said. Emhyr nodded shortly.

“Captain Dolaish, relieve Ser Fingal and Ser Aodhan with a full complement of four guards to be stationed directly within my bedchamber. Geralt of Rivia will investigate this attack, and I leave the matter in his capable hands,” he said, and then looked at Cirilla. “The Empress Apparent will join him for the length of time necessary to assist in the investigation, and then will of course accept an additional complement of Imperial Guards to be stationed outside her room when she retires.”

“But-” Cirilla started to argue, and then stopped when Emhyr raised a single eyebrow. “Of course,” she said finally. 

Emhyr looked at Geralt. 

“Do you require the room left in this condition for your investigation?” he asked. Geralt shrugged again. The smashed glass and broken furniture wouldn’t _help_ the investigation. 

“No, you can clean up,” he said. Emhyr smiled at that, a small, sardonic smile as if Geralt entertained him, and then turned on his heel, his robe sweeping out behind him. 

“Mererid, ensure this room is prepared for me by morning,” he said, and then crossed into his bedchamber. The second he wasn’t in the room everyone except Ciri jumped into action, the guards marching out looking shell-shocked and Mererid summoning an army of maids and servants to sweep up the glass and carry the broken furniture away. Geralt looked at Ciri, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“You heard the man,” he said. “You’re helping me.”

Ciri sighed. “We killed the wraiths didn’t we? Do we have to clean up too?”

Geralt smiled at her, and didn’t move. “Witchers don’t just deal with the results of monsters, they also see to the causes,” he said, which had been a favorite saying of Vesemir’s when any of them had complained about destroying monster nests or butchering endrega corpses. Ciri actually laughed, and shook her head, her hair falling over her shoulder. 

“Fine,” she said. She crouched next to the fine dust and bone shards that one of the wraiths had become, picking through the remains to extract the emerald dust they sometimes left behind. Geralt handed her a couple of handkerchiefs to package it up. It wasn’t greed. Wraiths’ leavings were rare and useful. 

“Okay, what do you think?” he asked her, as she moved on to the second pile of wraith leavings, some poor maid sweeping up the one they were done with. Ciri hummed. 

“They felt new,” she said. “Angry, but not powerful. And not nightwraiths, just standard wraiths.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said, letting her continue to work. 

“But where did they come from?” Ciri asked, climbing to her feet after she’d finished with the last wraith. “There aren’t any human remains here. A mage? They’d have to be pretty stupid to be messing around with necromancy.”

“There are other ways to make a wraith. And I can’t say I think trying to kill Emhyr var Emreis is particularly bright,” Geralt said, which made Ciri snort. 

“Not if you’re on the case,” she said. “Can you sense anything in the room?” 

Geralt shook his head. He hadn’t even caught a scent of the wraiths anywhere in the room, and the mess they’d caused had probably covered any possible tracks. 

“A chance for you to practice your detailed searches,” he said, which made Ciri roll her eyes. 

“I don’t think the Empress of Nilfgaard needs to know how to search a room,” she said, but still started a spiral search, using her hands to mark out each segment. 

“Hmm,” Geralt said, watching her. “You never know what’ll come in handy.”

That had also been a favorite phrase of Vesemir’s. Strange to think of all the ways he had tried to not be Vesemir over the years, and he found himself emulating him more and more now. Ciri finished her search, and turned up nothing more than a single vial’s worth of wraith essence and more questions. Emhyr’s new guard arrived, and Geralt sent Ciri back to her rooms, promising he’d meditate just outside Emhyr’s door, in case any more wraiths appeared. 

The rest of the night was uneventful. In the morning, Geralt went back to his rooms to eat and shake some of the wraith dust off his clothes. He annoyingly had more questions than answers. Wraiths didn’t just appear out of nowhere. They rose from the remains of those who had died violent or painful deaths. They didn’t just pop into existence in the living room of the Emperor of the North and South because some assassin wanted them to. 

Without anything more useful to go off of, he retraced his steps and went to speak to Georgi, the guard who had fought the first wraiths. He didn’t have anything to add; he hadn’t even seen Pavetta, just the wraiths, and had run away as soon as it was clear they were real and not Stirk’s imagination. Geralt went back to the palace’s central courtyard. Here the gossip about the attack was truly circulating. Apparently several nobles had seen Pavetta’s ghost in the hall just before the wraith attack, and someone, Geralt suspected Kelan, had let the cat out of the bag over who the mysterious blonde lady was. The palace was alive with the gossip that the emperor’s dead wife had risen from the dead to haunt him. In the true spirit of gossip, opinions were divided on what the purpose of the haunting was. Geralt heard everything from a spectral endorsement of Cirilla’s future rule to a frankly ridiculous werewolf conspiracy to turn into ghosts and take over the North. 

The court seemed to have mixed feelings on his role in their new favorite melodrama. A few of the, in his mind, more sensible nobles refused to talk to him, but many of them were happy to spill their thoughts. Geralt was sure Emhyr would have thought it all fascinating, and been able to tell him the significance of all their nattering, but all he concluded was that no one knew anything about the source of the wraiths or the continued sightings of Pavetta. He lost two games of gwent trying to play and think about it at the same time, and went back to his rooms disgusted with himself and the whole court. 

If it was an attempt on Emhyr’s life, and not a case of misdirected wraiths, they were sure to try again. Geralt oiled his blade again, ate, restoked his potions, and, just as night was falling, walked to Emhyr’s rooms and knocked on the door. The guards posted outside the door eyed him suspiciously, but he supposed that was their job. 

“Come,” Emhyr’s voice came from inside the room, strong and imperious even through the wood of the door. Geralt entered. Emhyr was at his desk again, in his dark night robe, but now two guards were posted at the door to his bedroom. Emhyr looked up. 

“Geralt. Do you wish to update me on the progress of the investigation?” he asked. Geralt took advantage of the new chair facing Emhyr’s desk to throw himself into it, slouching instinctively. He’d never seen any reason to act differently around royalty and he wasn’t about to start now. 

“Not quite,” he said. Emhyr was too good to react to the rudeness of Geralt sitting in the presence of the emperor without permission, but he did raise an eyebrow. “Whoever sent those wraiths is going to try again, and I can’t be running around finding wraiths after they’ve already appeared. I wanted to meditate in here tonight, in case they come back.”

Emhyr put his quill down, and leaned back, clasping his hands together. 

“The reasoning is sound,” he said. “Those who wish to kill me are rarely dissuaded by their failure. I am sure they will try again. Your presence would be a significant level of protection, and, if it would help with your investigation, I am happy to withstand it.” 

Geralt turned that over in his head. 

“Someone’s tried to kill you before?” he asked. Emhyr raised his eyebrows at him, the look that Geralt just knew meant Emhyr thought he was an idiot. 

“I am the Emperor of the North and South, the Black Sun Risen, the White Flame Dancing on the Graves of his Foes. My rise to the throne involved a significant amount of bloodshed, and the Northern Wars have been much the same. I have made many enemies. Several someones have attempted to kill me, on multiple occasions. As you can see,” he said ironically, spreading his hands. “They have been unsuccessful.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said, smiling. He liked it when he was annoying enough that Emhyr got sarcastic. 

Emhyr ignored him, and looked at the window, where the sun had fully set behind the hills of the city. 

“I do not retire for another half an hour,” he said. “You may inspect my rooms. I am sure they are up to your standards of security.”

He looked down at the papers he was reading, and didn’t look back up, clearly having dismissed Geralt from his immediate concern. Geralt lounged in the chair for a while, trying to make clear that he certainly didn’t follow Emhyr’s _orders_ but he quickly got bored of his pride, and got up to inspect the rooms. Most people probably would have thought Emhyr didn’t react, but Geralt could see the slight tightness around his mouth, like he was holding back on a smile. 

Geralt ignored that, and checked all the windows and doors, a hand over his medallion to try and sense even the smallest magic. The guards watched him as he searched Emhyr’s bedroom from top to bottom, looking under the massive bed, ostentatiously painted with gold leaf, and above the bed’s canopy, behind the curtains and underneath tables, until he was satisfied there was nothing magical anywhere at all in Emhyr’s rooms. The door to the emperor’s personal gardens was tight shut, and latched, the well-tended flower beds and lawns visible through the windows. When he stood from checking under the bed for the second time, Emhyr was standing in the doorway, watching him. 

“Does it meet your standards, master witcher?” Emhyr asked, the corner of his mouth tugging up in a half-smile. Geralt leaned on his knee to stand, and dusted himself off. 

“It’s fine,” he said. Emhyr gestured to his guards when they tried to follow. 

“I believe my new guardian to be sufficient,” he said, and the guards stepped back. 

“Your grace,” one of the guards said in protest, and then fell silent when Emhyr looked directly at him. 

“I am sure a witcher will be able to slow any attack sufficiently that you will be able to run to my aid, Ser Domhnall,” Emhyr said. “You may remain outside.”

The door closed behind the guards, leaving Geralt and Emhyr alone. 

“Do you think that’s wise?” Geralt asked. Emhyr merely looked at him.

“I have found it wise to entrust you with my future in the past, yes,” Emhyr said plainly. He inclined his head towards a chair sat next to the window. “You may sit.”

Geralt crossed to the window but didn’t sit. It was habit to ignore Emhyr’s orders to make a point. He had no idea what point he was trying to make any more. That Emhyr wasn’t his emperor? He was now, with only Tretogor out of reach and that only until the Pontar froze. That Geralt was independent of the Nilfgaardian imperial family? He would never be impartial now. His heart turned towards Ciri, no matter the winds. 

Outside, it was completely dark, and the stars had begun to show in the sky over Vizima visible beyond the garden, the city’s lamps and torches burning beneath the spangled sky. It was a beautiful view. 

“Some view,” he said. 

“Vizima, for all its faults, remains a city of some beauty,” Emhyr said. Geralt turned around, and Emhyr was already sitting on his bed, on top of the coverlet, a pile of documents in his lap, several more books stacked beside him. He might as well have been at his desk for all the comfort the bed seemed to be offering him. 

“You’re just going to work?” Geralt asked, sitting down and stretching his legs out. Emhyr flicked his eyes up to look at him and then looked back at his notes. 

“It seems useless to sleep when I am sure to be awakened by the shrieking undead,” Emhyr said, focused on whatever he was writing. Geralt shrugged, and closed his eyes. 

“Suit yourself,” he said. “I’m going to get some sleep.”

Emhyr hummed. “I was under the impression that witchers did not need to sleep at all,” he said. 

“Hmm,” Geralt said, not opening his eyes. “We don’t need as much as humans, but we still need it. We’re not automatons from Zerrikania.” 

“I did not suggest you were,” Emhyr said, his voice firm through the darkness behind Geralt’s eyes. Geralt always liked listening to people with his eyes closed. Witcher senses gave him a clear picture of Emhyr, even blind. He could smell Emhyr’s sweat, oil he wore in his hair, the metallic tang where he had sweat against his chain of office turning the day. He could hear the scratch of Emhyr’s quill against paper, fabric turning and twisting around his wrist, and, if he concentrated, the faint thumping of Emhyr’s heart. “However,” Emhyr said, disturbing Geralt’s focus on the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. “It was my understanding that witchers did not have the same physical requirements as humans. That witchers could survive privations other humans would never withstand.”

Geralt grunted. “Can’t say I trust your understanding. Depends on what you’re talking about. Plenty of humans wouldn’t survive the injuries I’ve had.”

“But hunger? Thirst? Can a witcher die of these things?” Emhyr asked. Geralt opened his eyes at that, looking directly at Emhyr, meeting his hazel eyes. 

“Witchers can die of anything if it lasts long enough,” Geralt said flatly. “Why the sudden interest in our weaknesses?”

Emhyr lifted one of the books next to him, turning the spine out towards Geralt. _An Account of The Witcher Schools_ read the title. 

“I am finding the available reading unedifying, and, frankly, inaccurate,” he said. “There are few people who know much about witchers who are not witchers themselves. Many of the records of your kind have been lost.”

Geralt crossed his arms over his chest. 

“Safer that way,” he said. Emhyr didn’t frown, but the muscles around his mouth tightened, the smallest expression Geralt had ever seen on any human’s face. 

“Perhaps,” he said. “But you cannot then accuse me of intentional ignorance.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. That was probably fair. “Ask your questions to me then, don’t read that drivel.” 

Emhyr’s eyes flashed quickly, like the idea of asking Geralt about witcher history was blood in the water. “Any number of questions? Or are my subjects limited?”

Geralt sighed. He was already regretting this. 

“One question to start,” he said. “Let’s see how we get on.”

Emhyr paused, and Geralt got to watch him think, clearly considering which one curiosity he wanted to spend his question on. Geralt had never considered that Emhyr might have interests outside of the throne. But Duny had lived in Cintra happily for years, and, if Geralt remembered Calanthe’s accusations from that night correctly, had won Pavetta’s heart with poetry. He certainly read enough, from Geralt’s observations. 

“Why are there no female witchers?” Emhyr asked finally. Geralt blinked. He'd expected something about the mutations, or maybe witcher invulnerability. This was an avenue he hadn’t anticipated. 

“There are hardly any witchers anymore, of any sort,” Geralt said, which was true. He was one of maybe half a dozen who did any work north of the Yaruga, and he knew of no others south of the Sansretour. 

“But there were never any?” Emhyr asked curiously. “Was it something to do with the process of the mutations, or was it by choice?”

“No, there were some,” Geralt said. “I knew a handful, before I was on the Path. Jorna Landern, she was School of the Griffin. I watched her spar the training master before my second trial. Griffins are fast, agile, good with magic. She could throw fire twice the length of a man’s body.” He paused, remembering that day. He and Eskel had both finished the Trial of the Grasses, and had been practicing signs nonstop for weeks. Sometimes he’s barely been able to produce a spark with Igni, and then he’d watched Jorna Landern, a bear of a woman with thighs bigger than Geralt’s head, spray fire across the courtyard of Kaer Morhen like it was nothing. It had been memorable. “And Alisa of Reszel,” he said, remembering his history. “She was School of the Wolf, from Kaer Morhen. I used to read her entries in the annals to Ciri, when she was small. She liked the stories.”

“Witchers have bedtime stories?” Emhyr asked, with amusement in his voice.

“Hmm,” Geralt said. “I don’t know if you’d call them that. They were educational, to teach us how to fight specific monsters. Ciri fought a forktail the second year she was with me, using Alisa’s techniques.”

Emhyr wasn’t looking at his notes at all now, leaning forward to listen to Geralt speak. 

“And a forktail is?” he asked. Geralt looked at him to see if it was sarcasm, but it seemed genuine curiosity.

“A type of wyvern,” Geralt said. “They’re not very big.”

Emhyr’s eyes widened in surprise. “As in, a draconid? Cirilla fought a draconid when she was 13?” he asked. 

“She killed it,” Geralt said proudly. He still remembered standing back, holding his crossbow, letting Ciri fight the thing. She’d been coming on leaps and bounds and had been desperate to bag her first draconid trophy. They’d written her name in the annals of Kaer Morhen together that winter, with her list of prizes. Emhyr was staring at him as if he’d grown a second head. “I don’t know what you thought Ciri was doing with me all those years,” Geralt said defensively. “But it certainly wasn’t dancing lessons.”

Emhyr didn’t snap back at him, just looked at him levelly, like Geralt had said something stupid and he was waiting to see if that was a temporary blip or a deep character flaw. 

“Cirilla’s witcher training is an asset for her,” Emhyr said slowly. “It gives her a perspective she would not have gained at court.” He blinked slowly, and broke eye contact, looking out the window, the light reflecting in his eyes. “But I will admit I often think of her as the woman she is now and before that the child I held in my arms in Cintra, with no intervening time. Her time with you is all a blankness to me. I know nothing of it.”

“She hasn’t told you about it?” Geralt asked, shifting a little in the chair. He refused to feel bad that he knew Ciri better than Emhyr did. Emhyr had only himself to blame for that. If he wasn’t trying to make up for lost time, that was on him. 

“I believe she thinks she will scandalise me if she shares the detail,” Emhyr said, and some of his sarcastic humour was back in his voice. “And I believe you will understand when I say she is stubborn and determined. She has committed herself to the work of being Empress. She is determined to prove that it was the right choice.” Emhyr rubbed at his chin, and maybe it was the fact they were alone, at night, in the room where Emhyr slept, but his voice was quieter. “I am not sure if she is trying to prove this to herself, or to me. Perhaps she does not know.”

Geralt snorted quietly. 

“You’re not wrong about her being stubborn at least,” he said. Emhyr hummed, but didn’t respond, and there was a long silence. Geralt let his eyes fall closed again, slowing his breathing and tuning his ears to listen closely to the world around him. Outside the window, a night owl hooted distantly. He could hear the footsteps of servants in the hall, carrying out their nighttime errands to keep the palace running smoothly. 

“You know,” Emhyr said thoughtfully, disturbing the silence. “I do not think human fairy stories are so different from witcher ones.” Geralt opened his eyes, raising his eyebrows. Emhyr was writing at his notes again, but there was a faint furrow of thoughtfulness between his eyebrows. 

“Hmm,” Geralt said. “What do you mean?”

“They would seem to serve to teach the same lessons for human children as they do for witchers in training,” Emhyr said. “The lessons for witchers are intended to help them survive to adulthood, correct?”

“I guess,” Geralt said slowly, feeling the now-familiar sensation that Emhyr had reached the conclusion of his thoughts hours previously and was only now bringing Geralt along with him. 

“Think of the lessons the common fairy stories impart,” Emhyr said patiently. “Do not go with strangers, do not tarry off the road at night, do not swim in deep water. Surely wise lessons for any child, witcher or human.”

Geralt snorted. “Witcher ones tend to be a bit bloodier, I think,” he said. Emhyr put his notes down his notes and looked direct at him, raising an eyebrow. 

“Share one with me?” he asked. “To demonstrate the genre?”

“You want a witcher story?” Geralt asked, smiling at the very idea of it. Emhyr shrugged, and gave an expansive gesture that took in the two of them, the room, the dark sky outside. 

“We are awake late into the night, awaiting the appearance of a potentially deadly phantom of unexplained origin. I believe a story is traditional,” he said. 

“Hmm,” Geralt said, leaning his head back and thinking. He’d told Ciri countless witcher stories over the years, monsters he and other witchers had faced all over the North. But she had always loved Alisa’s stories the best. “Alisa of Reszel, master witcher of the School of the Wolf, rode to the village of Barra,” he said, falling easily into the rhythm of the story, remembering more and more of it as he spoke. Alisa always wrote her entries in the same way. 

“A contract was offered by the family of a young woman, believed to have been spirited away by a water-horse, which the elves call _each uisge_. The woman had been wooed by a young man while tending to her herd, but she refused him when she saw his hair was of water-weed and his feet were hooved, as a horse’s are. She left him sleeping alongside the deep lake close to the village and returned to her family. Seven days later, the man returned to her, demanding she join him. When she refused again, he became angry, and was seen to spit lake water. The girl struck him in fear, but her hand stuck fast to his skin. The man transformed into a pale horse, and carried the woman to the lake, where they were said to vanish.”

Geralt swallowed, and continued. Emhyr watched him the whole time, his focus not wavering. Under his gaze, Geralt’s skin prickled, uncomfortably aware of the attention. 

“Alisa investigated the shore of the deep lake. A small number of drowners disturbed her investigation, but she dispatched them quickly, making use of Igni and her silver sword. She found human remains that had washed up on the shore. Observing the size, shape and age of the bones, she determined they were not of the missing girl, but the quantity indicated the water-horse had been feeding from travelers to the village for many years. The creature had not eaten the lungs or liver of the consumed humans, but left them on the shore. This indicated the creature was indeed a water-horse, and not a water hag, glaistic, or other water dwelling creature who consume their victims whole.”

He paused and looked at Emhyr, who was watching him with interest. “I told you it was bloody,” he said. Emhyr dismissed that with a gesture. 

“It is no more so than a battlefield report,” he said. “Please continue.”

Geralt wanted to balk at that, but he had said ‘please’, which he’d never heard Emhyr say before, and Geralt wanted to finish the story. He could remember Ciri’s face, drifting off to sleep, as he told her the story of the water-horse that had hunted in Barra, and how she had always seemed just about to sleep before becoming wide awake with questions. 

“Fine,” he said. “Alisa prepared using relict oil on her silver sword, and taking the potion Fisherman’s Friend, to allow her to fight in water. She meditated until dusk, when the water-horse rises from the lake, and surprised the creature in the shallows. The water-horse charged, but Alisa repelled its attack with the use of Aard and dealt it many strong blows with her sword. The water-horse was wiley and ancient, and dove into deep water. Alisa followed. Her sight allowed her to see in the darkness of the pool, and, when she found the water-horse, they tangled, exchanging blows, until Alisa was able to strike the final blow, separating the water-horse from its head.”

Geralt remembered how Ciri had gasped at that part, nervous and excited all at once. He smiled. 

“A witcher is not paid if they cannot demonstrate the contract has been completed,” he said, continuing the story. “Alisa brought the head of the water-horse to shore. She investigated the bottom of the lake, discovering the water-horse’s lair. Here she liberated the valuables of the creature’s previous victims, and discovered the remains of the girl, bringing all she could carry to shore. The family grieved for the loss of their daughter, but buried her remains in the manner of their people, and paid the witcher for her rendered service. Thus does Alisa of Reszel, master witcher of the School of the Wolf, record her deeds for the education of her guild.”

Geralt cleared his throat, and looked at Emhyr.

"A fine story," Emhyr said, inclining his head. Geralt figured that was the closest he was getting to 'thank you'.

"That was one of Ciri's favorites," he said. Emhyr’s face was totally still, like the surface of a dark, deep lake, who knew what swimming underneath. 

After a moment, he opened his mouth, his face curious, like he was about to ask a question, and, in that very instant, the door to his bedchamber scraped open quietly. Geralt didn’t even register he was on his feet and his sword drawn until it had happened, and the maid who had appeared in the doorway shrieked, and dropped the clothes she was carrying. 

“Oh merciful Melitele!” she shrieked, the scent of her sudden fear rolling off her. Emhyr hadn’t moved from the bed, only sat up ramrod straight, and cut off her panicked babbling with a slashing gesture. 

“Explain yourself,” he said abruptly. The maid dropped into a low curtsey. 

“I’m so sorry your imperial highness, usually the guards just let me in, I come and hang your clothes for tomorrow,” she said quickly, still curseyed low, keeping her eyes down as she scrambled to pick up the clothes she had dropped.

“Then complete your task and leave,” Emhyr snapped, and looked away from her like he could make her disappear with a thought. She whimpered quietly, but dashed to the dressing screen and quickly hung up the black robes Emhyr wore daily, her eyes constantly darting to Geralt, even after he sheathed his sword. She nearly ran out of the room, the door swinging closed behind her. Geralt let himself fall back into the chair, raising an eyebrow at Emhyr. 

“You just have people coming and going while you sleep?” he asked. Emhyr didn’t seem to think it was even a question. 

“I usually sleep with guards on the door and in the bedchamber,” he said. “And although I must sleep, the work of the Empire rolls on through the night. When I was on campaign, my commanders would bring reports to my bedside, so I could appraise myself of the war’s progress as soon as I woke.”

Geralt didn’t even need to sleep regularly, and that sounded like torture. Emhyr wasn’t even alone when he slept. If Geralt wanted to be around others, he had to deliberately seek them out. Their lives were two sides of a coin, the opposites of each other. 

“What were you about to ask me?” he said, instead of voicing that thought. Emhyr opened his mouth, and then closed it, looking away. 

“A passing thought,” he said. “On Pavetta’s appearance. It is of no matter.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. If Emhyr didn’t want to tell him, that wouldn’t usually be any of his business, but Emhyr had made it his business by giving him this contract. “Could be important,” he said. 

Emhyr looked back at him, apparently resolved to spit it out. “I have been told that ghosts are born from the regrets of the deceased. That they return to this plane to complete that left undone.”

“Sometimes,” Geralt said. “It isn’t always that simple.”

“I wanted to know if a ghost can be formed from the regrets of a living person. Can they be made from the mistakes of those they left behind?” Emhyr asked, meeting Geralt’s gaze. His hazel eyes were glassy, full of some emotion Geralt couldn’t divine. He found most humans easy to read, they were petty or greedy or angry as circumstances decided, but Emhyr held his cards close to his chest. It made him difficult to know. 

“Spectres can be complicated,” Geralt said. “They don’t follow easy rules. The magic that forms them isn’t disciplined, like it is for mages or sorceresses. It’s - instinctive. Emotional. Strong feelings hold them in place. Pain. Rage. Fear. They make spectres more powerful, give them form. Releasing them is about - neutralising those emotions. Why, do you have regrets?”

Emhyr looked at him. “Is that so shocking?” he asked. “That I regret the manner of Pavetta’s death? That I had planned to make her empress of the known world, to raise her to a queendom that befitted her, and instead her bones lie on the ocean floor and her daughter is a stranger to me?”

Any other man would have gotten emotional. Geralt couldn’t hear even the faintest tremor in Emhyr’s voice. He laid everything out like they were all facts on a page, events that had happened to someone else. Maybe it helped him to separate those parts of his life - the cursed hedgehog knight and the Emperor of Nilfgaard as two wholly unconnected men. Geralt had never been interested in lying to himself, it seemed useless and unproductive, but he was familiar with it in other people.

“I thought emperors didn’t have time for regrets,” Geralt said. 

“They do not,” Emhyr said. “Not when they are precarious emperors without heirs, engaged in costly wars yet unwon, reliant on the support of those who feel only self-interest and no loyalty.” He sighed, and his expression when he looked at Geralt was frank. “I am none of those things now. Perhaps it is timely my regrets have finally reached me. If I had ever wondered at it, I am sure I would have known they would take Pavetta’s form.”

“We don’t know that’s what’s happening,” Geralt said practically, but Emhyr wasn’t listening to him and they were both turning to the window, suddenly filled with a wraith’s horrible unearthly glow. 

“Damnit,” Geralt growled, drawing his silver sword. “It’s outside.”

“What do you propose?” Emhyr said, already on his feet, his face thrown into drastic shadow by the light. 

“Stay here,” Geralt said to him firmly, and pulled open the door to the garden, his sword held high. For a second, the light was everywhere and he was nearly blinded, blinking against the flash of wraith glow. But as his vision cleared, he got his first clear sight of the ghost. 

It was Pavetta. Kelan had been right. She’d been a beauty. Her spirit was nearly picture perfect, her hair coiled into a long braid, her hands clasped in front of her, her face beatifically still. All over she glowed unholy green, casting her own light into the garden. Geralt held his sword up, taking a few tentative steps forward. Powerful wraiths could hold the shape they’d had in life for a time, but to attack they needed to be in their true wraith form. 

“Pavetta?” Emhyr’s voice came from behind him. When Geralt looked over his shoulder, Emhyr was framed in the doorway, the warm light of the candles haloing him. 

“Fuck,” Geralt spat. “I told you to stay inside.”

Emhyr took a tentative step forward. “Pavetta?” he said again. The green light of the wraith was reflected in his eyes. 

Geralt looked back at the wraith, trying to keep his attention on two things at once. She hadn’t moved, just stood there, her expression not changing, everything unnaturally still. 

“Something’s wrong,” Emhyr said, and Geralt growled in frustration. 

“Of course something’s wrong, there’s a wraith in your back garden and you’re trying to _talk_ to it,” he spat, trying to put himself between the ghost and Emhyr. 

“Not that,” Emhyr said distractedly, and he was still trying to get a closer look at the damn thing. Geralt reached out and forcibly pushed Emhyr behind him. “It’s been so long,” Emhyr said nonsensically, almost to himself. “I can’t be sure.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Geralt said, mostly to make a point of expressing his frustration. He was certain the wraith was going to attack at any moment, and then he’d have the tricky job of killing it and making sure it didn’t hurt Emhyr. This was why witchers worked alone. So they didn’t have to worry about protecting anyone else. 

Behind them, a wraith screamed. 

“Fuck,” Geralt said, already whirling. Three wraiths had appeared in Emhyr’s room and were scrambling for the door, their ghostly faces full of rage and hunger. They were moving, and the ghost of Pavetta wasn’t. Geralt quickly prioritised, and swung at the first wraith as it emerged from the door, taking off its boney arm at the elbow with a satisfying crunch. The wraiths spilled the rest of the way out into the garden, Geralt right in the centre of them, but he didn’t give them time to gang up on him. He hit two of them with Aard, ignoring the way it made them shriek, and then went after the third, hitting it hard and then putting silver through its ribs, wrenching the skeleton apart until it disintegrated. 

One of the others had gotten behind him and swiped at his back with its claws, making him grunt. It was instinct to turn and chop at it, dodging back when it tried to get a piece of him, and then he punched it in the head with his free hand, moving quickly to get in close to the last one and, in one smooth move, turning and swinging, cut its head off. 

He panted, catching his breath, looking over the disintegrating skeletons. No more wraiths screamed, and nothing attacked him. Emhyr was standing on the lawn a few steps away, watching him, not a hair out of place, having stayed out of the fray. 

“Where’d the other one go?” Geralt asked, keeping his sword up just in case. 

“It disappeared when the other wraiths attacked,” Emhyr said. “Are you alright?” 

“What?” Geralt asked, and realised Emhyr was staring at him and his cheek was wet. He put a hand to his face and it came away wet with blood. Damn, one of them must have got him. “Just a scratch,” he said. “I’m fine.” He wiped the blood away with his sleeve. “More important question, where the fuck did these come from.”

He poked one of the wraith corpses with his boot. Made inert by silver, the bone turned to ash as soon as it was touched. 

“Hmm,” Geralt said, and crouched, running his fingers through the dust. It was wet, more paste than ash. “These wraiths are new.” 

“New?” Emhyr asked, crouching down next to him. 

Geralt rubbed his fingers together, feeling the way the ash smeared across his skin. “They haven’t been dead long,” he said. “The older the wraith, the dryer the bones.”

“What does that mean?” Emhyr said, as Geralt stood and started searching around them, letting his pupils dilate in the dark to see details. Emhyr didn’t stand, but watched Geralt move across the garden, following each of his steps. 

“Means their remains have to be close by,” Geralt said. “New wraiths can’t travel far from their bones. Someone had to get the remains here. Skeletons don’t just get up and walk around on their own.”

“I think a recent corpse near my chambers would have been a source of comment,” Emhyr said doubtfully, but Geralt waved him quiet. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply and letting his other senses take over. He could hear Emhyr’s breathing, and, on the other side of the hedges, guardsman patrolling in the distance. And he could smell something. Not the cloying sweetness of rot, but something earthy, metallic. 

Once he’d focused on it, he could almost see the smell of it, a trail from the wraiths back into Emhyr’s room. He had to blink to adjust to the light of the candles and lanterns for a second, but then it was obvious. It was coming from Emhyr’s clothes, hung over his dressing screen. 

Emhyr had followed him back into the room, and raised an eyebrow when Geralt lifted one of the robes to his nose and breathed in deeply. Starch, and soap, and, faintly, underneath it all, the thick, meaty smell of marrow. 

“Are these brought fresh every day?” Geralt asked, using his fingers to feel along the sleeves of the robe. Nothing in the pockets, but there were other ways to put something in clothes. 

“Yes,” Emhyr said, clearly not following. “The palace laundry replaces my clothing daily.”

“There’s something in these,” Geralt said, and then, “Ha.” There was something lumpy in the seams. He pulled his short knife out from his belt and cut through the stitching quickly, exposing the lump. He pulled it out and showed it to Emhyr. A single long finger bone, still yellow. Someone had cleaned it, but they’d missed just enough of the marrow that Geralt could smell it. 

“Gruesome,” Emhyr said succinctly, his lip curling. Geralt grunted. 

“There’s probably more of them,” he said. They both went over all the seams on the clothes, ripping out the stitches, until they had uncovered an eerie handful of finger bones, piled in Geralt’s palm. 

“Hmm,” Geralt said, looking at them for a moment, and then put them in a purse at his belt. “We’d better find that maid.”

“She will be in the laundry,” Emhyr said. “I will accompany you.”

He strode across the room, pulling a long sleeved robe over his night robe, making his guards jump when he pulled the door open. 

“Ah good,” Emhyr said, apparently electing to ignore the way they scrambled to jump to attention. “Ser Domhnall, you will accompany us. Ser Neil, inform Mererid he must rise and attend me within the hour.”

“Yes, your grace,” one of the guards said and strode out of Emhyr’s suite. Emhyr did not slow down even slightly, and Geralt followed him out into the palace proper, Ser Domhnall trailing behind them. Emhyr led them down the hall and down one of the servant’s stairs, a twisting spiral staircase that took them down into the bustling bowels of the palace,where cooks and charcoal burners and laundresses still laboured. 

As they walked the halls, everyone who saw them bowed or curtseyed or threw themselves prostrate in surprise, like a wave of humanity parting ahead of Emhyr’s path. It made Geralt deeply uncomfortable, but Emhyr barely seemed to notice. 

He stopped in front of the thick-handed woman at the head of the laundry, who held her deep curtsey without wavering.

“Your grace,” she said nervously. Her eyes flicked upwards, looking at Emhyr, Geralt, the swords on his back, the guardsman behind them. Emhyr looked down his nose at her. 

“The woman who brings my clothes nightly,” he said. “Where is she?”

The laundress’ face contorted in surprise. 

“Marta? Your grace, she is bleaching the linens. In the lye room,” she said, and pointed to a room at the back of the laundry. 

“She’s alone?” Geralt asked. The laundress swallowed audibly. 

“Yes, master witcher,” she said. 

“Return to your duties,” Emhyr said, at a pitch the whole room could hear. “Do not disturb us.”

The room suddenly sprung into activity, no one wanting to get caught disobeying the emperor. Emhyr paused at the door to the lye room, and looked at Geralt. 

“I’ll go first,” Geralt said. “You just stand there and look imperious.”

Emhyr snorted, very un-imperiously. “I will permit you to interrogate the woman who has made a treasonous attempt on the life of the emperor, yes,” he said. 

Geralt ignored what he suspected was the sarcasm in that, and pushed open the door. 

Marta didn’t see Emhyr to start with. When she saw Geralt she only put down her washing and said “Ser, you can’t be here.” Emhyr stepped in after him and she squeaked and curtseyed deep. Geralt ignored that and grabbed her wrist. She struggled, uselessly. 

“Ser, what are you doing, let go of me,” she said, pulling at Geralt’s grip. He reached into his belt purse and pulled out the bones, showing them to her.

“Do you recognise these?” he asked. She took one look at them and her entire demeanor changed. Suddenly she was hanging from Geralt’s grip, not able to keep herself on her feet, crying and weeping, pulling at her own hair. Geralt could smell the fear and panic rolling off her. 

“Please, oh gods, I didn’t have any choice,” she was wailing, pulling weakly at Geralt’s grip on her wrist. “Please, your grace, you have to believe me. They promised me 500 florens to sew them into the seams, and my father’s sick you see. They said if I told anyone they’d kill me! Your grace, oh gods, please, gods save me.”

Geralt shook her a little to get her attention. 

“Hey, who offered you the money?” he asked. “What did they tell you?”

Marta swallowed, and looked up at him. “Just that they’d give me the bones, and I could collect the money that night after I finished work,” she said, still crying. “Please, ser, it isn’t my fault.”

“You took bones from recent corpses because a man offered you money?” Geralt said. “Sure, you’re blameless. Where did they meet you?”

“The fallow field by Lyfia’s temple, at the edge of the city,” she wailed, throwing herself to the ground, all her weight pulling at Geralt’s grip. He grunted, and yanked her back half up, slumped over herself on the floor. 

Emhyr took a step forward, looking down at her. She immediately pivoted from trying to get Geralt to let her go to Emhyr. 

“Please, my lord, emperor, I’m no traitor, I didn’t know what they wanted, please,” she babbled, tears still running down her face, trying to bow and prostrate herself all at once. She wasn’t trying to get anywhere and she definitely wasn’t faster than him, so Geralt gave up on holding her up and let her arm drop. 

“Be silent,” Emhyr said curtly. Marta wasn’t stupid enough to ignore that and merely hiccuped and continued to cry silently. “In Nilfgaard, the punishment for treason is beheading,” he said, and looked at Geralt and his swords significantly. Marta moaned in fear, drawing her arms into herself, making herself as small as possible. 

Geralt crossed his arms. “I’m not your executioner,” he said, because he wasn’t. He’d fight wraiths and investigate assassinations, but he drew the line at beheading a girl in a laundry room because she was stupid enough to get greedy. He knew there was no logic to it, that his lines crossed back and forth over each other, but they were his lines nonetheless. 

Emhyr paused thoughtfully. "What is the customary punishment in Temería for aiding a murder attempt?” he said.

Geralt had spent too long working in Temeria to pretend he didn’t know that. He sighed. 

“They cut one of your hands off,” he said. 

“Hmph,” Emhyr said. He looked at Marta on the floor for a second, his face totally emotionless. Geralt didn’t even hear his heartbeat change. Apparently, he made a decision. 

“Ser Domhnall, clap this woman in irons and have her arraigned before Judge Erlulf at the High Court. Considering the hour, you may have to raise him from his bed. She has confessed before witnesses to her crime. Ensure the punishment is carried out and return to inform the laundress that she is dismissed from her post,” he said. Ser Domhnall snapped his heels together and nodded. 

“Your grace,” he said. Geralt thought he might have to drag Marta away, but she went, stumbling and crying about mercy, thanking Emhyr over and over again. Emhyr watched her go, his face thoughtful. 

“I am not sure it was mercy,” he said eventually. “A woman with one hand and no occupation is more likely to starve than she is to live.”

Geralt shrugged. “That’s her problem now,” he said. 

Emhyr seemed to shake himself free of his thoughtfulness, and looked across at Geralt. “I suppose we shall have to hurry to catch her conspirators at their rendezvous point,” he said, and then walked away, Geralt needing to step quick to keep up with him. 

“We?” Geralt asked, as they climbed the stair back to Emhyr’s rooms. “Who said anything about we?”

Emhyr looked over his shoulder. “I will not be dissuaded,” he said, and rounded the corner.

Mererid was standing at the door of Emhyr’s suite, dressed in formalwear even though it must have been past midnight. Did the man sleep?

“Mererid, I will need plain, hard-wearing clothes, such as a capable mercenary may wear, and a serviceable sword, knife and full coin purse,” Emhyr said, as if he expected his demands to be met within moments. Mererid only tipped his head. 

“If your grace would step behind the dressing screen,” Mererid said, following Emhyr into the suite. Emhyr stepped behind the screen, throwing his outer-robe over it, and then his night robe. From a chest, Mererid removed everything Emhyr had requested and passed them behind the screen. 

Geralt crossed his arms. “I still don’t think you should come with me,” he said, knowing Emhyr could hear him. 

“It has been made abundantly clear that these attacks are not political,” Emhyr said plainly. “They have made it personal. I cannot allow such an affront to go unanswered.”

Geralt leaned against the sideboard. “How do you figure they’re personal?” he asked. 

“The bones could have been hidden in any part of my rooms,” Emhyr said, over the sounds of dressing. “Instead they were sewn into the very clothes I wear. The spirit they have chosen to summon is not a nameless shade, but my wife, and the mother of my heir. It is personal.”

“It’s not that simple,” Geralt said. “Whoever’s doing this didn’t just find any old bones. Wraiths are born from painful, violent deaths. This person is willing to torture innocent people to get at you. They’re not going to hold off on killing you just ‘cause you’re wearing normal clothes.”

Emhyr stepped out from behind the screen. The transformation was nearly uncanny. He didn’t look like the emperor roused from his bed anymore. He looked like any other aging mercenary Geralt had known in his life, in middling quality armour and a single sheathed steel sword. He could have been any number of fighting men of his age who plied their trade, smart and wiley enough to survive beyond their youth but staring the certainty of their age in the face. 

“Well, if it comes to that, I will be with you,” Emhyr said. “So far, you have proved perfectly competent at saving my life.”

“I only need to make one mistake,” Geralt said. Emhyr didn’t relent. 

“Then make no mistakes,” he said, and Geralt growled in frustration. 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he said. “At least let me look at that.” He gestured for Emhyr’s sword, who handed it over, a confused look on his face. Geralt ignored him, and ran a hand up and down the blade, checking for imperfections. It wasn’t so well-made it would be suspicious at the hip of a regular mercenary, but was functional enough it wouldn't break in the first fight. He unsheathed his own steel sword and felt down the pommel for the three notches where the runestones fit. It took a bit of digging, but he managed to pry the top one free, and, with a brief blast of Igni, attached it to Emhyr’s sword. He handed it back, pommel first, and Emhyr took it with some surprise. 

“It’s a Chernobog runestone, it makes your attacks more powerful,” he said, answering the question on Emhyr’s face. “It’s so some bandit doesn’t get lucky and kill the Emperor of the North and South.”

“Thank you,” Emhyr said with some surprise. 

“Don’t mention it,” Geralt said, putting his sword back in its sheath. “Let’s go.”

They rode out from the palace in the dark, not even a guardsman to see them off, Emhyr letting Geralt lead them off the paved king’s road and onto the tracks peasants used. No one worked the fields by the light of the moon, and those they did pass paid them no mind. 

As they got close to the edge of the city, Geralt led them into a copse of trees and tied Emhyr’s mount to a tree with a long rein. He left Roach to roam free. She was smart enough to stay put. 

“We’ll walk the rest of the way,” Geralt said, and Emhyr nodded. They crossed the remaining fields quickly, staying low to the ground and to the undergrowth when they could. As soon as they were in sight of the city, he gestured for them to stop. This was the poorest part of Vizima, the buildings of rough wood and patchy slate. There was a temple, Lyfia’s symbol daubed on the walls, and, between them and the temple, the fallow field. 

“Now we wait,” Geralt said, crouching down behind a bush, looking at Emhyr over his shoulder. “Still happy you came? This is going to be pretty boring.”

“I would beg to disagree,” Emhyr said, and nodded over Geralt’s shoulder. Two men in dark clothes were walking up to the field from the city, heavily armed. 

“Where’s that bitch?” one of the men said, and then spat on the ground. 

“She mighta got cold feet,” the other one said, his voice high-pitched and whiney. “We’ll wait a spell and then head back. No skin off our nose if she don’t want the coin.”

“Boss won’t be happy,” the spitting one replied. 

“We will need to get closer,” Emhyr said from behind him, and Geralt waved him quiet. 

“Shh, I can hear them fine,” he said, trying to block out the background noise of animals and the city. 

“They are at some distance,” Emhyr said with surprise, but Geralt just shushed him again. He’d explain witcher hearing later. 

The men stood around and talked for a little while longer, about nothing more interesting than the beer they wanted to drink and the gwent they wanted to play, until they finally seemed to get bored of waiting and turned back towards the city. 

“C’mon,” Geralt said, and pulled at Emhyr’s arm. They ran down the edge of the field as quietly as they could, keeping to the shadows, Geralt keeping an ear out for the distinctive sound of the whiney man’s voice, hoping he wouldn’t lose them in the noise of the city. 

“What are we doing?” Emhyr asked, keeping pace with him even as they ducked into the alleyway alongside the temple. 

“Following them,” Geralt said. “They’re just muscle. They’ve got to report back to someone.”

Geralt thought he might have to slow down for Emhyr, but he kept up fine, not arguing when Geralt would pause, opening his senses to the onslaught of the city, and then take them down another dark alleyway, twisting and turning through the darkest, dankest parts of the city. The streets were mud and filth, and they had to dodge leavings thrown out windows several times, but even the muck of the city wasn’t enough to cover up the trail of the men ahead of them, and they finally rounded a corner onto a wider street and saw the two men enter a non-descript house. Geralt heard the door lock behind them. 

“Damn,” he said, and caught Emhyr before he stepped full out onto the street, one hand firm on his shoulder. “Wait a second,” he said, pushing him lightly back into the darkness of the alleyway. He could see fine in the darkness, though he had no idea what Emhyr could see. The only lights were from a few low burning torches on the main street. Geralt could see the flush of exertion on Emhyr’s face, the determined, hungry look in his eyes. Geralt knew that he liked the chase himself, but it was arresting to see it in someone else’s face. Emhyr had the scent of these people, in thought if not in life, and he wanted to see the chase through to the end. 

“Do we pursue them?” Emhyr asked, resting his hand on the pommel of his sword. 

“Hmm,” Geralt said, looking up and down the street. He didn’t like the look of their hideout. The door was only big enough for one at a time, and was liable to get them stuck in a bottle neck. “I know this part of town.”

He’d been in and out of Vizima constantly in Foltest’s time, and even in the last couple of years, dodging war and worried sick about Ciri, the city had always been a rich seam of contracts. If he was remembering correctly, there should be - ha. He grinned. Across the street from the hideout of the men they’d followed, a bawdy house was bright with light. Over the door hung a brightly painted sign of a woman holding up her skirts. 

“I don’t recognise that,” Geralt said, nodding at the house the men had gone into. “But I do recognise this.” He pointed to the bawdy house.

“You are not going to the brothel,” Emhyr said in a doubtful tone. 

“C’mon,” Geralt said, stepping out into the street. “Maybe you’ll enjoy it.”

“I do not see how this can possibly contribute to locating the conspiracy against me,” Emhyr said, catching up with him. Geralt let him draw level, and looked across at him. He thought about teasing him some more, but took pity on him. 

“Look, a bawdy house is the best place for gossip in a city,” he said practically. “If anyone knows what’s happening across the street, it’s the whores.”

The door to the brothel house flew open and a man staggered out and promptly vomited in the street. Emhyr’s lip wrinkled in barely-contained disgust. Geralt sighed. 

“Just trust me,” he said. “C’mon.” He put a hand between Emhyr’s shoulder blades and pushed him through the open door. Inside was loud and bright, someone playing the lute and singing a filthy song about a priest at top volume, drunk customers singing along, working men and women trying to convince them upstairs. The proprietress noticed them come in, and came over immediately. 

“Geralt of Rivia!” she said happily, opening her arms. “It’s been a long time since you were in my house.”

“Hi Griselda. Been busy,” Geralt said with a smile. “Is Bryan working?”

Griselda laughed. “You’re in luck witcher, he just finished with a customer. Top of the stairs, third door on the right. You’ll have to pay double if you’re bringing your friend.”

“I think we can afford it,” Geralt said, and went up the stairs, Emhyr behind him. The brothel’s top level was busy, but all the doors were shut. He hoped Emhyr couldn’t hear what he could. 

“Geralt-” Emhyr said, when Geralt paused outside the door Griselda had mentioned. Geralt looked at him. No one else knew he’d brought the Emperor of the North and South into a down-at-heel bawdy house in the south of Vizima, but it was still a sight. 

“Just follow my lead,” he said, and pushed open the door. 

The room was like hundreds of other brothel rooms Geralt had been in before, just a small room with a bed and little other decoration. It wasn’t for living in. A young man, Geralt knew he was older than he looked, was lounging on the bed, and looked up when they came in. He had a boyishly handsome face, and brown hair down to his ears. Geralt knew it was all deliberate. 

“Hey Bryan,” he said. Bryan jumped up to his feet, a huge grin splitting his face. 

“Geralt!” he said, throwing his arms open and hugging Geralt fiercely. “What a surprise! I haven’t seen you in years.”

“Been busy,” Geralt said. “You’re looking the same.”

Bryan smiled up at him flirtatiously. “Well, you know me,” he said. “It’s an asset in my line of work.” Bryan looked over Geralt’s shoulder. “And you’ve bought a friend! You know I charge extra for that right? What’s your name, handsome?”

Emhyr didn’t look impressed. “Duny,” he said. “And who are you?” Bryan didn’t seem put off and let go of Geralt to sit back on the bed and bat his eyelashes. Geralt nearly laughed, but managed to swallow it at the last second. 

“Bryan Penstock, at your service,” Bryan said, and stuck out an arm. His fingers shifted, and a hat appeared in it, and he doffed it playfully. Geralt crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, watching Emhyr’s reaction. Bryan could have an impact on people. 

Emhyr blinked, the gears clearly turning. “You’re a doppler,” he said. Bryan shifted the hat away, and wiggled his fingers at Emhyr in a little wave. 

“In the flesh,” he said. “You look surprised.”

“My apologies,” Emhyr said formally. “I’ve never met one of your kind before.”

“That you know of,” Bryan corrected with a smile. “Lots of people say that and have had doppler friends all along. I’m a little more open than most. Geralt and I go way back.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Geralt said. He’d helped Bryan out when he’d been cursed nearly ten years ago, and Bryan had remained a useful person to know. He uncrossed his arms. “I’m not here on pleasure Bryan, I wanted to ask you some questions.”

“What kind of questions?” Bryan asked. 

“There’s been people going missing in the city, probably nearby. Have any of the girls who work here gone missing? Or women who come looking for work and you never see them again, even on the street?” Geralt asked. Bryan looked thoughtful for a second. 

“Well,” he said. “I’m sure I could think about it, but you know you’re taking up time I could be working.” He looked between the two of them. “With paying customers.”

Geralt sighed. “Fine,” he said. He pulled a handful of crowns from his belt purse and stacked them up on the table by the door. “Does this jog your memory?”

“Oh, very much so,” Bryan said happily, eyeing the gold. “No one from here’s gone missing, but there’s some talk in town about women going missing, ones who don’t work in a brothel with guards, if you catch my meaning. Some men came by two weeks ago, sniffing around, saying if any girls came asking for work and we couldn’t help them, we should send them on to them.” Bryan shrugged. “Griselda sent them packing. She doesn’t trust brothels run by men.”

“Did they leave some way to contact them?” Geralt asked. “You seen them around?”

Bryan shrugged. “Sure. A couple of them are staying at the boarding house across the street. But they gave another address.”

“Where?” Geralt asked. Bryan looked at the gold on the table and then back at Geralt’s purse significantly. Oh, for fuck’s sake. He took out another crown from his purse and deposited it on the table. “Don’t push me any more,” he said warningly. “I know that’s more than your rate.”

Bryan pouted. “You’re such a buzzkill,” he said. “The address was near Maribor’s gate, above The Bloody Hare. It’s a pub, you can’t miss it.”

Geralt smiled. That was the lead they needed. 

“Thanks Bryan,” he said. He tossed him a coin off the top of the pile he’d left, and Bryan caught it one-handed. “See you around.”

“Sure you want to go?” Bryan said, not trying to be alluring at all but giving Geralt a firm, direct look. “Give you a discount.” He looked over at Emhyr and smirked. “2 for 1?”

Geralt snorted. “Some other time Bryan,” he said, and held the door open for Emhyr. “Don’t get into any trouble.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” Bryan said with a laugh, and then the door closed shut behind Geralt. Emhyr didn’t say anything as they left, but Geralt had a feeling questions were coming all the way down the stairs, until they were back in the street, avoiding the puddle of vomit now mixing with the mud. 

“You have interesting friends,” Emhyr said eventually, walking side by side with Geralt. They had a short walk to Maribor’s gate. The sky was still dark, but just at the horizon, visible sometimes through the clustered buildings, Geralt could see the faint grey of dawn, still some hours off. 

“Hmm,” Geralt said. “Witchers meet all sorts. Bryan mixed with the wrong people a few years ago, got cursed. I lifted the curse.”

“You weren’t a customer?” Emhyr asked. Geralt cleared his throat uncomfortably. That wasn’t technically true. Bryan liked his job, and didn’t care a whit about witcher mutations or strange eyes. A brothel wasn’t a bad place to spend the night, if you had the coin for it. They had stables around the back for Roach, the food was halfway decent, and you could get a decent fuck and a good night’s sleep all the same place. It sounded pretty mercenary when he thought about it. 

“Um,” he said eventually. Emhyr’s eyebrows both shot up. 

“Surely the lady Yennefer disapproves of sojourns to brothels?” he said. Geralt snorted. 

“Yen’s a hundred years old, and I’m not far behind her,” Geralt said. “If we were going to get upset at each other about that, I think we got it out of our system a few decades ago.”

Emhyr frowned at that. “I wouldn’t have thought she was much interested in sharing,” he said. Geralt shrugged. 

“It isn’t sharing, exactly,” he said. It felt like the wrong way to describe what he and Yen knew about each other. That the bond they had, the love they had built, every mistake and argument and blisteringly happy summer, tied them so tightly together that years and months apart were like nothing. They’d both cared about other people, in their lives, and would again. And through it all, through every injury and heartbreak and loss, they would come back to each other. “We’ve learned that gripping someone tightly makes them more likely to slip away,” he said. 

“An important lesson to learn,” Emhyr said. Geralt looked at him and raised his eyebrows. 

“Well, some of us didn’t have to invade the North three times to learn it,” he said, and watched Emhyr’s expression change from shocked to affronted to chagrined. 

“I suppose that is a fair assessment,” Emhyr said after a moment, and Geralt snorted. 

“Maribor’s gate is just around here,” he said. “Keep your hand on your sword and do what I say.”

Emhyr nodded, and they rounded the corner. Bryan had been right. You couldn’t miss the Bloody Hare. Someone had painted nearly the entire thing bright red, in broad uneven strokes, and the paint had dripped down the sides and over the frames of the windows and door like blood. 

“Aptly named,” Emhyr said dryly. Geralt nodded towards the dark alley entrance to the side. 

“Let’s see if there’s a back way in,” he said. The back opened onto a little muddy courtyard, trash collecting in the corners, but there were a set of ramshackle stairs that led to the rooms above the pub. Geralt paused at the bottom of them, listening closely for anyone moving above them, but heard nothing. 

He led them up the stairs quietly, wincing at every creak of the wood, his steel sword drawn and ready. Emhyr followed his lead, sword in hand behind him. But they were lucky. When Geralt pushed open the door, the room was empty. It was a bare room, a thin bed shoved up against the wall, wooden wardrobe next to it, and would have been entirely normal if not for the huge and ominous bloodstain in the middle of the floor. It was fresh, Geralt could smell its wet metallic tang. 

“Crudely ominous,” Emhyr said, the dry tone back in his voice. Geralt sheathed his sword, the sword loud in the silent room. 

“At least it’s not subtle,” Geralt said. “I hate subtle murderers.” The subtle ones always thought they were smarter than Geralt, which was just obnoxious. 

“Quite,” Emhyr said. “Can we find something that points to their identity?”

Geralt started going through the boxes and sacks stacked against the wall. “The men we saw are just paid thugs,” Geralt said. “Someone will be paying them.” 

“Most certainly,” Emhyr said, pushing a sack aside with the toe of his boot, having walked a wide berth around the blood stain. “But if we can determine the mastermind behind the plot we can prevent this from developing any further.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. So far the sacks mostly held the normal detritus of a city, cups and pipes, old bits of broken wood, some moth-eaten fur. Nothing that held any clue to what had happened in the room, or who was paying for its happenings. 

Emhyr had more luck. He unearthed a few torn pages of parchment, scrawled with instructions and half a name that Geralt didn’t recognise and Emhyr only made thoughtful noises at. Geralt wasn’t that frustrated. Sometimes things were just deadends, and he was planning to take Emhyr back outside, convince him to go back to the palace, and then spend the rest of the day staking out the place blessedly free of Emhyr’s watchful eye. He was realising he’d actually miss it. It was nice having someone along with him. Usually investigations were just boring, but Emhyr didn’t argue, asked pertinent questions, and was surprisingly reasonable company. He’d had the vague idea it would be like having Dandelion along - mostly frustrating, occasionally highly dramatic, with the largest challenge keeping him alive and full be-limbed - but it was more akin to taking Ciri along on contract. 

Not for the first time, he had to remind himself they were actually related, but this time it actually felt like a compliment to Emhyr. 

Emhyr was puzzling over the paper again when Geralt paused. It was just at the edge of his hearing, but something was coming. 

“Emhyr,” Geralt said. Emhyr waved him off, rubbing his chin in thought. The sounds came closer, and became distinct voices and, under them, the sound of footsteps on a staircase. “Emhyr.”

The stairs creaked, and it was uncomfortably close. Geralt looked around the room, triangulating furiously. The room led nowhere, and the window was too high for a jump. He’d probably break a leg, and it’d be worse for Emhyr. The ceiling was too short to give him a full swing of his sword. In short, it was a crap place to fight and a crap place to defend Emhyr. 

He turned on Emhyr, making a decision. “Get in the wardrobe,” he said. Emhyr looked up from the paper, entirely scandalised. 

“What?” he said. Geralt grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him at the wardrobe. 

“Get in,” he said, pulling the door open to the wardrobe and pushing Emhyr in. The noise was at the door now, and Geralt barely managed to step in after Emhyr and pull the door closed and then the door was opening and four men stomped in. 

“What on _earth_ ,” Emhyr said cuttingly, and Geralt resisted the overpowering urge to slap his hand over the mouth of the Emperor of the North and South. 

“Shh,” he hissed, bracing one hand on the back of the wardrobe, and keeping his head ducked down. The wardrobe was barely big enough for one large witcher, and Emhyr wasn’t a small man. His neck was nearly fully against Geralt’s face, and he could feel Emhyr’s hot breath against his own neck. 

Outside, the men were stamping around the room, moving boxes and depositing something. The wardrobe was uncomfortably warm with their combined body heat. Emhyr shifted, one of his shoulders pressing against Geralt’s arm. Geralt couldn’t see his face, but he could imagine his frustrated expression. His breath was loud in Geralt’s ear, close and harsh. Geralt tried to block it out and listen to the men outside. They were speaking Common with Temerian accents, but he didn’t recognise any voices. They weren’t Blue Stripes. That was a worry off his mind he hadn’t realised he was thinking about. He didn’t think Emhyr would be particularly patient with Roche if it turned out some renegade Blue Stripes were trying to kill him. 

“What are they saying?” Emhyr asked, in a nearly subvocal whisper. 

“Something about the palace, let me listen,” Geralt whispered back. There was a loud scraping song, like a box being dragged, and then one of them spoke. 

“What happened to the last set of bones?” asked a deep voice. 

“Boss took them up to the palace,” someone said in reply, and it was the whiny-voiced thug from the field. “Probably cuddling them to sleep, the freak.”

“A freak with plenty of crowns,” the deep voice replied, and the room bubbled with laughter. Geralt didn’t like it. It was the kind of laughter of people who had grown used to finding pain entertaining. A hundred years or so of hunting people like that had made him an expert. 

“Their employer is at the palace,” Geralt whispered into Emhyr’s ear, his lips a hairsbreadth from his skin. Emhyr turned his head slightly, and Geralt flinched back when he felt Emhyr’s neck brush over his mouth. Even for just a second in passing, his skin was hot, and Geralt caught a single drop of his sweat, shockingly salty. 

Another box dragged across the floor. 

“Fuck, this is heavy,” the whiny voice said. 

“Full of bones innit,” said the deep voice. 

“Eugh,” the whiny voice said. The deep voice laughed. 

“Just kidding with you Nevin,” he said. “The last girl’s bones are all used up. The boxes are all full of glass and shit, the boss is always wanting new mirrors.”

Geralt frowned. “Something about mirrors,” he said quietly into Emhyr’s ear. He couldn’t see Emhyr’s face, but he could smell his sweat, feel the hard corner of one of his shoulders pressed up against Geralt’s arm. 

“Mirrors…” Emhyr whispered thoughtfully, more a soundless movement of his lips than actual words. 

Outside the men were still talking, and half of Geralt’s hearing was devoted to that, even as his shoulders started to ache from being cramped up inside the wardrobe. 

“Geralt,” Emhyr whispered urgently, and his fingers closed tightly around Geralt’s arm. For a second, Geralt ignored him. The footsteps of one of the men in the room was worryingly close, and getting closer. “Geralt,” Emhyr said again. 

“What?” Geralt hissed, trying to stay quiet. The owner of the footsteps outside the wardrobe wasn’t talking, and then meant he was probably _listening_. 

“We must return to the palace immediately,” Emhyr said, clearly forgetting to whisper as he spoke and his voice rising to his normal speaking level. “I know why Pavetta looked strange to me, I’ve seen that image before. It can’t be her ghost, I know how they’re making her appear.” 

“Hey, what’s that noise?” said the whiney voice in the room. Geralt ground his teeth. Damnit. 

“There’s something in the wardrobe!” the deeper voice said loudly. Geralt sighed. Well, he’d tried. He pulled back far enough he could meet Emhyr’s eyes. 

“Do _not_ get in my way,” he said, in what he hoped was a quelling tone, and then turned his hip and kicked the door of the wardrobe as hard as he could, bursting out and drawing his sword as it flew outwards. 

As he’d hoped, the door had collided with the man who hadn’t spoken, and he had thrown his arms up to protect his face. He didn’t move for his sword fast enough, and Geralt sliced him in the gut before he could get his guard up. There were four more men in the room, and Geralt picked one at random and went for him. The low ceiling meant he couldn’t bring his full strength to bear with an overhead swing of his sword, and he had to parry and counter-attack, slicing hard and vicious. He didn’t even distinguish the assailants in his mind, just went at one until he was dead and then turned on the next. One of them got him in the shoulder and he grunted angrily at the stab of pain, and then stabbed the attacker in the neck, annoyed and mad about it. 

Three men were dead on the now even more bloody floor, one of them missing his head, when Geralt stopped to breathe. Emhyr had the last one up against the wall, a sword at his throat. 

“Tell me the name of your employer,” Emhyr said harshly, breathing a little hard from the exertion of the fight but his face still a terrifying mask of anger. “Now,” he said, pressing a little harder with his sword, and Geralt watched it cut at the skin of the thug’s neck. 

“I don’t know!” the man babbled, scrabbling uselessly at the wall. It was the whiny-voiced one, Nevin. “He never told us his name! Just some posh Nilfgaardian bugger.”

“Do you know his face?” Emhyr asked intently, leaning in closely. “Could you point him out and swear to it?”

“Yes, yes, anything,” Nevin begged, and in one quick movement Emhyr pulled the sword from his neck and let him slump against the wall. Geralt hefted his sword, ready to cut his head off. Emhyr raised a hand to stop him. 

“Do not kill him. We need to bring him to the palace with us, urgently,” he said. Geralt sighed. 

“How are we going to do that?” he asked, but gestured with his sword to get Nevin moving. “C’mon, let’s go.”

They managed to get down the stairs without an issue. Their new prisoner seemed cowed by Geralt’s sword and having witnessed three of his compatriots’ deaths and didn’t try to get away. Around the side of the inn, Geralt found some horses tied up to a hitching post, and happily liberated them. An upside of being with Emhyr meant he probably wasn’t going to get chased by a guard for stealing. 

“Get on the horse,” Geralt said, giving the thug a shove, and handing the second pair of reins to Emhyr. “You better have an idea of what’s going on,” Geralt said. “Because I certainly don’t.”

Emhyr mounted the horse easily, one powerful thigh swinging over the saddle.

“It was slow to come to me, but I have realised how this plotter has made the false image of Pavetta appear. If we hurry, we may be able to discover their identity and prevent further victims,” he said. Geralt supposed that was as much explanation as he was going to get, and mounted up on the other horse, their new prisoner held on the horse in front of him. 

Dawn was starting to reach over the rooftops of Vizima and they rode quickly, straight towards the palace on the main paved roads. The grey light grew stronger as they rode, and by the time they reached the main gate of the palace, the light over the horizon was golden yellow, lighting up the white stone of the palace. A guard tried to stop them, and Geralt got to witness his panicked apologies when he realised the common mercenary he was trying to stop was the emperor. 

By the time they’d ridden into the stables, Captain Dolaish had already assembled a complement of guards.

“Captain,” Emhyr said, with a short nod towards Geralt’s prisoner. “This man is a prisoner of the palace. Ensure he is locked in a cell and fed. I shall need men to accompany myself and the master witcher. Oh, and dispatch grooms to return our horses from the edge of the city, the fallow field by the Temple of Lyfia.”

Geralt dumped Nevin off his horse and into the arms of a waiting guardsman by the scruff of his neck. Guy probably didn’t believe his luck in getting a roof over his head and a meal. 

“Where are we going?” Geralt asked. Emhyr dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to a groom. 

“My private garden,” Emhyr said. “If I am correct, the evidence we need shall be available there.”

“And if you’re not?” Geralt said, dismounting. One of the grooms, who seemingly appeared out of nowhere when needed, took the reins from him, and drew the horse away. Geralt caught up with Emhyr already entering the palace. 

“Then you will continue your investigation,” Emhyr said, walking briskly. “But I am rarely incorrect.”

Geralt snorted. If Ciri ever ended up with Emhyr’s confidence, he was gonna have to come back and beat her in training a few times, just to knock her down a peg.

When they reached Emhyr’s rooms, he walked through with no acknowledgement of the surroundings, brushing Mererid off, until they were in the garden. It looked no different than it had earlier that evening, although with some marks in the grass where Geralt’s boots had dug into the soft ground. Emhyr turned to look at him, the dawn light lighting his dark hair. 

“Do you recall exactly where the image of Pavetta was?” he asked. Geralt nodded. 

“Sure,” he said, and went over to stand where the green apparition had stood. “Here.”

“Excellent,” Emhyr said, and then struck off from Geralt at an angle, towards the tall hedges. “There is a gap here for the gardeners - aha!”

Emhyr had stopped at the edge of deep gouges in the ground. Geralt crouched down next to them, feeling the ground. Still wet with the early morning dew. 

“I saw gouges like this where the first attack happened,” he said, looking up at Emhyr. “What made them?”

“It is my suspicion it is a heavy painting being moved,” Emhyr said, pacing urgently. “It took me too long to realise. I knew the Pavetta I saw was familiar, but I thought it was memory alone. It has been so long since I saw her alive.” He paused, and looked at Geralt. “The image we saw of her was an exact duplicate of her official portrait that hung in the palace at Cintra. Only one existed. I had thought it was destroyed in the Siege of Cintra in the second war. There are very few who could have had access to it.”

“So, arrest them,” Geralt said, standing. Emhyr dismissed that with a flick of his hand. 

“I cannot arrest nobles of my court at random, as much as it would please me,” he said. “The evidence must be unimpeachable. Is there something here you can track?”

Geralt sighed. It had been nearly a full night since the original attack, and whoever had placed the painting would surely have hidden it by now. Emhyr watched him silently as he re-examined the gouges, checking footprints, and then searched outward from the disturbed earth. 

They got lucky. Caught on the edge of the gap in the hedge was a scrap of fabric, a rich black like a Nilfgaardian might wear. He smelled it deeply. The scent was strong - perfume, sweat, hair oil, something else he couldn’t identify. He could track that, already sensing where the trail reached out ahead of him. 

“Get your guards,” Geralt said to Emhyr. “And follow me.”

He set off through the gap after the trail of the scent, fading a little with the time but still discernible. He heard Emhyr call the guards and knew they were following them both, but he kept his focus on the trail, leading them through the gardens that connected to Emhyr. The trail turned and twisted, and twice more, in wet ground, they found the same deep gouges, as if something had been dragged. 

“These are the gardens of the noble quarters,” Emhyr said, as the trail pulled them onwards. 

“Hmm,” Geralt said, stopping by the wall of the palace, where a terrace overlooked the neat gardens. “It turns here, into these rooms.”

“These are the rooms of Kelan var Giorsal,” Emhyr said. He turned to the guards that had come with them. “Enter,” he said. 

Geralt didn’t realise what they were doing until one of them leaned back and kicked the door open, the latch snapping with a sharp sound. 

“I could have just blasted that open, you know,” Geralt said, as the guards rushed in ahead of them. Emhyr gave him a rare smile. 

“The guards like to feel useful,” he said dryly, and then turned his head, his smile dropping off his face, proceeding into Kelan’s room with long steps, for all the world like he owned the room. Geralt supposed he technically did. 

“Ah, your grace!” Kelan said nervously, when he saw them both behind the guards. “Is everything quite well? Only the hour is quite early.”

“Good morning Ser Kelan,” Emhyr said, his voice frigid. “I believe you have a possession of mine that I would like returned posthaste.” 

“Your grace, I’m not sure what you mean?” Ser Kelan said. Geralt ignored his protests and started his own search of the room. Something was different about the room since he’d last seen it. He paused in front of a set of curtains. They shouldn’t have been there. The wall was internal and windowless, another noble had rooms on the opposite side. They smelled wrong too, without the layer of candlesmoke and human bodies that the other fabrics in the room had acquired. 

“These are new,” he said, turning his head to look at Emhyr, where Kelan was still pretending not to know what was going on. Emhyr ignored Kelan and looked at the guards. 

“Remove those,” he said.

“No, you can’t!” Kelan protested, but the guards pulled open the heavy curtains. Behind them, a life-sized portrait leaned against the wall, in a huge ornate frame. It was of Pavetta, wearing a blue dress with her golden hair in a long braid, her hands clasped. The bottom of the frame was streaked with mud. 

“Ser Kelan, you will explain yourself,” Emhyr said flatly. 

“You can’t _have her_ ,” Kelan spat viciously. His whole face was transformed, like the person he’d been before has been a mask, and this, the spitting rageful lord, was the real him. He lunged towards Emhyr, his hand going for his belt knife. 

“Woah,” Geralt said, and reached out to catch the back of his doublet. Kelan struggled for a moment, but didn’t even seem to realise he’d been caught. Emhyr looked down his nose at him. 

“You killed her and you can’t _have her_ ,” Kelan said, heavy with rage. “You killed her. You killed her when you didn’t need her anymore, and no one thought to avenge her. And when Cintra fell, I went into the palace to find her painting and save her, and keep her safe. You don’t deserve to look at her face. You should look at her and fear for your life.”

“Ser Kelan, you disgrace yourself,” Emhyr said. “Your family had served the empire faultlessly. Collect yourself and I will forget this.”

“I will _not_ ,” Kelan said, his face red with anger. “You deserved those wraiths to hold you to account for your crimes. I just helped things along. You should have been dogged by wraiths every step of your life. I’m proud to have given those spirits a purpose.”

Emhyr raised an eyebrow. “Are you admitting to the murders that created the wraiths? That is a serious crime.”

Kelan seemed too angry to realise what he was saying. He kept looking at Pavetta’s painting, the whites of his eyes showing. 

“It was for a good reason!” Kelan shouted, throwing his whole weight against Geralt’s hold. Geralt grunted and pulled him back. He didn’t weigh much, but everyone had their breaking point and Kelan had apparently reached his, which made him bizarrely strong. 

“Captain Dolaish, clap this man in irons,” Emhyr snapped, turning his back to Kelan. “Put him under guard in the small reception room. Allow no visitors.”

“No, no, you have to _listen to me_ ,” Kelan was shaking with anger now, but Emhyr ignored him. Geralt handed him over to one of the guardsmen by the back of his doublet, letting the guards grab his wrists, still struggling and demanding Emhyr’s attention. Geralt ignored him also, and followed Emhyr out to the garden. 

Emhyr was standing with his hands behind his back, his legs braced, staring out over the garden. His shoulders were tight with tension. In the distance, Geralt could hear Kelan yelling, but the sound was growing fainter. 

“You knew it was Kelan?” Geralt asked, coming up alongside him. Emhyr didn’t respond for a second, and Geralt was just looking at his face, lined at the temples and mouth by age, the eagle-like nose. Emhyr shook himself.

“No,” he said. “That particular revelation has been an unpleasant surprise. It was the mention of mirrors that made me realise we had seen the painting of Pavetta.”

“I don’t follow,” Geralt said. 

“It is a parlour trick, used by men without magic to pretend they have the ability to conjure spirits,” Emhyr said dismissively. “I am sure behind Pavetta’s portrait we will find mirrors the size of the portrait, and perhaps a green sorcerer’s lantern. If one arranges the parts at the correct angle, it is possible to make a false image appear.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. He didn’t see how Emhyr had got from a throwaway mention of mirrors to that, but Kelan certainly didn’t seem to think they had the wrong man. “Why’d he do it?”

Emhyr shrugged, a graceful rise and fall of his shoulders. “Why does any man, full of rage and spite, having convinced himself he owns a woman, do anything?”

Geralt frowned. That didn’t sound like Emhyr at all. Geralt would have thought he would have wanted to know everything, every tiny detail that had played in Kelan’s plan, twisted as it was.

Soft footsteps sounded on the terrace, and Geralt turned quickly, his hand going to his sword, but it was only Mererid, carrying a black robe folded over one arm. 

“Ah, Mererid, I was just about to call for you,” Emhyr said, already turning and raising his arms to be dressed. Mererid shook out the robe and raised it over Emhyr arms, completely enveloping the normal clothes he wore. Even without the chain of office, the mercenary disappeared and the emperor emerged. 

“I thought your grace would appreciate his robe,” Mererid said, from a bow. Emhyr straightened the collar. 

“Mererid, does Vernon Roche still take lodgings in Vizima?” Emhyr asked. Mererid rose from his bow. 

“I believe he has taken up residence in the former home of the bürgermeister, your grace,” he said. Emhyr hummed thoughtfully. 

“Send a messenger requesting his presence at the palace. Have the message worded such that it is clear that this is a request, not a demand,” Emhyr said, still looking out at the garden. He glanced at Geralt for a second. “Ensure the messenger lets slip in word, not in writing, that Geralt of Rivia stays at the palace, and the matter concerns him. I shall also need Judge Erlulf. The message to him may be a demand. That will be all.”

Mererid bowed again. “Your grace,” he said, and then withdrew, slipping between the hedges. 

“What do you want Roche for?” Geralt asked. He wasn’t sure he liked Emhyr dropping his name like it was useful to him. 

“Ser Kelan murdered several Temerians in an attempt on my life. If his crimes go unanswered, the deal that has allowed Commander Roche and his comrades to lay down arms will disintegrate,” Emhyr said, and then he looked across at Geralt, like he knew what Geralt was really asking. “Roche has no love for Nilfgaard, or for me. He would not hurry to respond to a summons simply because I have asked. But he trusts you. He will come quickly, if not least to satisfy his curiosity about your presence here.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. Emhyr smiled very faintly, but it had a smug air. 

“Come,” he said. “They will have laid provisions in my suite, and you have not rested since yesterday.”

“Witchers don’t need rest,” Geralt said, following Emhyr back through the gardens. 

Emhyr paused at the edge of his own private garden, looking back to meet Geralt’s gaze. 

“Men do many things they do not need,” he said. “I was given to believe witchers were the same.”

“As long as you have more of that wine,” Geralt said, and Emhyr smiled. 

“That can be arranged,” he said, and slid between the hedges back towards his suite. 

Geralt had thought Emhyr would rest, maybe do what some of the very rich Nilfgaardians did and retire to sleep in the middle of the day, but Emhyr just saw him established on the plush benches in his sitting area, and then went and sat at his own desk. Geralt thought about protesting but then a horde of maids and servingmen popped out of nowhere and started bringing him enough food and wine to feed a small army. 

“They will bring you whatever you ask,” Emhyr said, not looking up from his desk, when Geralt tried to decide what wine to ask for, so Geralt asked for a glass of white and red and propped his feet up. When he’d seen that notice in Oxenfurt, he’d thought his week of easy contracts and wine was cancelled, but this was better. 

Emhyr worked steadily for several hours, clerks and generals and vaguely fancily dressed people darting in and out of his suite, all of them giving Geralt a funny look when they saw him propped on one of Emhyr’s fancy sofas, drinking a glass of Zerrikanian red and reading one of Emhyr’s long books on ancient battles. He didn’t usually care about human battles. Their histories were usually long fake speeches delivered by the generals, and then a list of troop movements, but this one had apparently been written by some ancestor of Emhyr’s and included a lot of detail about armour types and individual tactics and Geralt found himself pleasantly warm and still interested when Mererid stepped into the room and cleared his throat. 

“Your grace,” he said. At least he didn’t give Geralt a funny look. “Commander Roche and Judge Erlulf arrive at the palace.”

Emhyr put down his pen. 

“Very good Mererid. Have them shown to the small reception room, and instruct Captain Dolaish to bring the witness,” he said. Mererid bowed and slid out the door. Geralt put down his glass of wine.

He didn’t have to follow Emhyr to know where the small reception room was; he could hear Kelan’s muffled shouting from inside it. A small crowd of curious palace residents had assembled outside the door, clearly gossiping furiously, but they scattered when they saw Emhyr coming, leaving only Roche and Judge Erlulf, a broad-shouldered man in a strange flat hat and a gold chain of office. 

“Commander, Chief Justice,” Emhyr said, by way of greeting. “Thank you for your time this afternoon.” He turned, nodding towards Geralt. “I trust you are acquainted with the witcher Geralt of Rivia.” His tone was not of a question, and he gave no pause for responses. “A terrible crime has been discovered, and I hope justice will be served today. Commander Roche, has a delegate of Temeria yet been appointed?”

“Uh,” Roche said, clearly not having expected the question. “Not precisely, we were envisioning a kind of council-” 

“I see,” Emhyr said, cutting him off. “In the interim, I ask you to act as the delegate of Temeria in this hearing. Chief Justice, will myself as Imperator and Commander Roche in the stead of delegate be sufficient to promptly try a crime?”

Judge Erlulf was not easily rushed. He paused for a moment, his jaw visibly moving as he considered the matter. 

“If the witcher is prepared to serve as witness,” he said eventually, in a deep voice. “Then I believe a preliminary trial will be possible ex cathedra, as they say. My decision would of course be subject to review by the assembled high court at our plenary session.”

Emhyr inclined his head respectfully. “Of course, chief justice. I believe it would be beneficial to resolve this matter swiftly. Let us enter. The accused awaits us.”

He didn’t give any time for either Roche or Judge Erlulf to ask questions, merely gestured for the guards to open the doors and stepped through the open doorway. Inside, Kelan was being pushed to his knees, his legs and arms both bound in iron cuffs. Nevin, the whiny voiced thug Geralt had brought to the palace earlier, was also there, his hands in cuffs, but standing, with only one guard watching him. 

Kelan had been arguing with one of the guards, but fell silent when Emhyr entered, his expression mutinous. 

“Commander, Chief Justice, this is Ser Kelan var Giorsal. He stands accused of the murder of at least seven Temerian citizens as part of a plot to kill me,” Emhyr’s face was grim when he turned to Roche. “We currently believe that he tortured them to encourage their spirits to rise as wraiths, and seeded their remains in the palace. Two men were killed.”

“Good gods above,” Roche swore under his breath. Judge Erlulf looked down at Kelan. 

“These are serious charges young man,” Erlulf said. “How do you plead?”

Kelan’s jaw worked stubbornly for a moment, and then he bent over and spat at Emhyr’s foot. The spittle landed less than a handsbreadth from Emhyr’s boot, but Emhyr didn’t even flinch. 

“This _emperor_ ,” Kelan said mockingly, “killed his wife and abandoned her. Only I cared enough about her to do anything about it.”

Emhyr looked at him for a moment, his expression impossible to read, then turned to Judge Erlulf.

“This man will swear that Kelan was the architect of the plot,” Emhyr said, gesturing to Nevin, still in irons. “Ser Kelan confessed when he was discovered. Both myself and Geralt will swear to it.”

Erlulf rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “A compelling set of witnesses,” he said, and then looked at Emhyr. “I understand the punishment for treason in Nilfgaard is beheading.”

Emhyr nodded slowly. “You understand correctly, chief justice. However, we are in Temeria. The law of the land must take precedence.”

“Hmm,” Erlulf said approvingly, like Emhyr had passed some kind of test. “Very true, your grace. You have studied your law. If you are willing to waive the charge of treason, then I can rule on the charges of murder. How many do we believe?”

“At least seven,” Geralt said, when Emhyr looked at him for the number. “Probably more. You’ll have to get a diviner in to find them all out.”

“An expense I am willing to fund,” Emhyr said smoothly. “Commander Roche, you have responsibility for security in the city?”

“Yeah,” Roche said slowly. 

“Captain Dolaish will coordinate with you to identify Ser Kelan’s victims and locate their remains. I am sure their families will be anxious to ensure a proper burial,” Emhyr said. 

Roche crossed his arms. “There’s a lot of refugees in the city,” he said. “Might be the families have already moved on.”

“In which case, they may be buried at the palace’s expense,” Emhyr said. “Commander, I wish to be well understood here. Ser Kelan has disgraced Nilfgaard and my personal honour. I will spare no expense in ensuring the matter is resolved. May I entrust you with this?”

Roche was frowning, but it was thoughtful rather than angry. “I’ll do it,” he said. 

“Good,” Emhyr said briskly, and then everything moved quickly. Nevin swore Ser Kelan had sent him out into the city to procure victims, and had bragged about his plan. Kelan spat and swore and threatened but didn’t protest any of the accusations, and Erlulf pronounced him guilty without any hesitation. Both of them were pulled away, or dragged in Kelan’s case, and Emhyr bowed shallowly to both Roche and Erlulf. 

“Chief Justice, Commander,” he said. “I must withdraw for official business. You may tarry on my hospitality as long as you wish.”

Emhyr’s black robe billowed out behind him as he swept out of the room, Erlulf bowing but Roche staying standing, his arms still crossed. When Emhyr was gone, Roche looked at Geralt, both his eyebrows raising. 

“You solving crimes for Nilfgaard now?” he asked. Mererid had appeared with his faultless timing and was already leading Judge Erlulf away. Geralt shrugged. 

“Just doing a contract,” he said. Roche snorted, like he didn’t believe him but wasn’t going to argue. 

“Nilfgaardians,” he said, shaking his head, and then made like he was about to spit, only stopping himself at the last moment. “Fuck, they don’t half make everything twisty. I’ll be glad when we’re shot of them.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. He had a suspicion Roche thought his troubles would be over when Emhyr left Vizima, as if Emhyr couldn’t make Roche’s life difficult from a thousand leagues away. “How’s Ves?” he asked, instead of pointing that out. 

“Fine,” Roche said, following Geralt out of the reception room and onto the covered walkway that looked out into the central garden. “She’s currently beating sense into the backwoods peasants and failed apprentices we’re calling a militia. Half of them couldn’t find the pointy end of a sword if it was up their fucking arse. The other half have already stabbed themselves with it.” He sighed. “Never thought I’d want the war back.”

Geralt clapped him on the shoulder. It was good to see Roche again, and good to see him in peacetime, looking like he finally had enough to eat regularly. “That’s your memory going already, old man,” he said, smiling. “You’re already forgetting the bad food, the cold and the mud.”

Roche laughed. “Fuck me, the mud. Took a bath every day for a week when we got back to Vizima, Ves thought I’d turned into a mermaid.”

“You’d be a really fucking ugly mermaid,” Geralt said, trying to keep a straight face, and then dodged when Roche tried to punch him in the shoulder. 

“Commander Roche?” someone asked from beside them, and they both turned, straightening the smiles off their faces. It was the guards’ captain, with the pips and the moustache. “I’m Captain Dolaish, I believe we had matters to discuss?”

Roche straightened his jerkin quickly. “Yes, yes, we did, thank you for finding me. Well, duty calls.” He shook Geralt’s hand quickly. “See you around Geralt.”

“So long,” Geralt said, and then Roche and Captain Dolaish went away, their heads bent together. 

For a moment, Geralt was at loose ends, looking out into the garden where Nilfgaardian nobles were chatting or playing gwent or admiring flowers, whatever idle noble people did in the late afternoon. But then Mererid slid into view, his steps so soft a normal human probably wouldn’t have heard them. 

“You’d make a great vampire, you know that?” Geralt said, Mererid raised his eyebrows but otherwise didn’t react. 

“I am sure the gentleman is the expert,” he said. “His grace has invited the gentleman to join his grace and the Empress Apparent for the evening meal. Suitable clothing has been provided in the gentleman’s rooms.”

“I’m going to get a complex about how I dress,” Geralt said. 

“Hmph,” Mererid said, obviously not amused. Geralt snorted, and didn’t wait for Mererid to do his slinky disappearing thing, just left the garden for the suite he had barely used. The clothes must have been different from the ones he’d been given the first night but he couldn’t tell. They were all black, and uselessly fancy. They’d be in tatters the second he had to fight. 

The afternoon was swiftly sinking into dusk, the light starting to disappear behind hills in the distance. Out of the windows of Geralt’s rooms, the setting sun cast Vizima’s lake into shadow, making the water look flat and dark. Little flickers of light were visible in the city itself, inns lighting torches, candles shining in windows. He assumed Emhyr would probably send someone to collect him, but it was late enough. Geralt had only a vague idea of when normal people ate their meals. When he was on contract, he ate in the saddle or when he had the coin for it. At Corvo Bianco, he and Yennefer both kept their own schedules and ate when it pleased them. It seemed late enough now to be a reasonable time, and he felt silly hanging around his rooms with nothing to do. Witchers weren’t decorative. He walked to Emhyr’s suite, feeling half-naked in the fancy clothes, his swords sitting on the sideboard in his rooms and not strapped to his back. 

The guards on Emhyr’s door didn’t even glance at him this time. Amazing how not carrying weapons in the presence of the emperor could improve the welcome. 

Emhyr was working at his desk, and barely glanced up when Geralt entered. 

“We do not dine for another hour,” he said, continuing to work. Geralt shrugged. 

“Didn’t have anything better to do,” he said. Emhyr dipped his pen in his inkwell. 

“ _A History of the Campaigns of Alexander var Emreis_ is on the table,” Emhyr said. “I believe you found it diverting.”

It turned out that was the title of the book Geralt had been reading earlier. Someone had left a velvet bookmark at his last place, and a decanter of wine with a glass on the table. There were worse ways to spend an hour, he supposed. 

By his internal clock, it was only half that before they were interrupted. Mererid stepped inside and bowed, clearing his throat, and Emhyr paused in his work to look at him. 

“Your grace, Lady Elianna var Cynfir has requested a moment of your time,” he said. Emhyr put his pen down. 

“Ah, I thought she would,” he said. “Show her in.”

Lady Elianna had dark hair, and the deathly pale skin all the Nilfgaardians seemed to like, which combined to make her look both striking and delicate. She nearly glided into the room, not a hair out of place. 

“Your grace,” she said, curtseying very low. It certainly looked elegant. She glanced sideways at Geralt briefly, and then, holding her curtsey, looked demurely up at Emhyr through her eyelashes. “Might we speak privately, your grace?” she asked. Emhyr set some paperwork aside briskly, clearly not interested in a polite exchange. 

“Geralt of Rivia has my confidence in any matter you wish to discuss, Lady Elianna,” he said frankly. “You may sit.”

Elianna blinked, but was clearly too well bred to show any more surprise. She sat in the chair facing Emhyr’s desk, spreading her skirts in a neat circle around her feet. 

“I have come to beg your forgiveness, in the name of my brother, your grace,” she said, hands folded neatly in her lap. “Kelan is hot-headed and impulsive, and he has always felt his emotions strongly. I am sure he does not deserve your forgiveness. But I must, as your most humble servant, ask you to extend the hand of mercy. I am his only kin. I could not forgive myself if I did not.”

Emhyr had sat with his hands clasped on his desk through that speech, and leaned back only when Elianna finished. His expression was serious, but betrayed nothing else. Geralt watched, the book open in his lap, curious. Emhyr didn’t do things casually. If he hadn’t wanted to speak to Elianna, she wouldn’t be there. 

“I have waived the charge of treason against Ser Kelan,” Emhyr said, and Elianna’s shoulders relaxed minutely. 

“Oh thank you, your grace, you are merciful-” she said quickly, smiling with relief. Emhyr held his hand up and she immediately fell silent. 

“However,” he said. “Ser Kelan also faced several charges under the law of Temeria. It is incumbent upon this court to remember we are but merely honoured guests in this land. I cannot overrule the law. Your brother will be hanged in the morning.”

Elianna said nothing. Her face froze, each line of it rigid. 

“I trust you understand this is the end of the matter?” Emhyr asked, already looking away and back to the work on his desk. Elianna inclined her head slowly. 

“Your grace,” she said, and then paused. “May I inquire as to his remains?”

Emhyr waved a hand. “You may request them from the Temerian authorities. I will not oppose their return to your family’s sepulchre.”

Elianna clearly understood that as a dismissal and rose, curtseying next to the chair. She was nearly to the door when Emhyr looked up. 

“Oh, a small matter Lady Elianna,” he said casually, and Elianna paused, her hand outstretched for the door, and turned back to face him. “Your brother was quite entranced by the fate of my late wife. He knew her well, but I will admit this is a long time for such a resentment to fester. Do you know anything about his mind in the last years and months?”

Elianna’s face coloured, not embarrassed Geralt realised, but angry and afraid and struggling to conceal it. She was sweating too. She had impeccable control, but his nose didn’t lie. 

“No, your grace,” she said smoothly, after a split second pause. “I know he was quite grieved when his position as envoy was no longer required, but he rejoiced in your victories, as did all my family.”

“Hmm,” Emhyr said. “Only, I am certain your son, Angared, would not have had the privilege to dine with the Empress Apparent, if your brother’s actions had not delayed this court’s withdrawal to the capital. I did mark that.”

Elianna’s knuckles were very white where she was holding her clasped hands in front of her. 

“My son was honoured by the Lady Cirilla’s attention in this past week,” she said. “But I am alarmed and saddened if this came as a result of my brother’s treason, your grace.”

“Well,” Emhyr said. “It is no matter. Ser Kelan’s trial has resolved the complication. Your son has accepted a commission to lead a battalion in the vanguard of the march on Tretegor.”

“Your grace!-” Elianna protested, and then clamped her mouth shut. Emhyr continued as if she had not interrupted.

“He will leave on the dawn, with the other commanders,” he said “It is a dangerous post, but comes with much opportunity to demonstrate himself. I suggest you pray to the Black Sun that he brings honour to your house. You may pray that he survives, if you wish.”

Elianna’s blush had disappeared completely, and her pale skin was so white with fear it was the colour of ash.

“Your grace, I-” she said, her voice catching on the final sound. Emhyr finally looked up from his desk, and his expression was thunderously angry, his eyes so dark it nearly knocked Elianna back, and she visibly flinched. 

“There was perhaps a seed of resentment in your brother,” Emhyr said darkly. “But it was fanned by someone who stood to gain much by his pursuit of his grudge. You are lucky the consequences have fallen most heavily on Ser Kelan, and I have been gracious to your son. His death is not certain, and he has been presented with an opportunity to demonstrate his worth. Do not incur my wrath again, var Cynfir. You have no other sons to gamble with.”

Elianna clearly understood that as the dismissal it was, and only curtseyed very quickly and darted out of the room, the door falling shut heavily behind her. 

There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the quiet scratching of Emhyr’s quill on paper. His work continued undisturbed. 

“Seems harsh,” Geralt said. Emhyr didn’t look up. 

“She drove her brother to murder to gain an advantage for her son,” he said. “Lady Elianna understands as well as I do that this game is played for the highest stakes.”

“Still,” Geralt protested.

“She would have killed Cirilla,” Emhyr said. 

“What?” Geralt asked sharply, sitting up, the book falling closed. He wanted a sword in his hand and to chase after that woman, he wanted to put a sword in Ciri’s hand, steel and silver, and cut down anyone who dared. Emhyr was looking at him, a bemused, nearly surprised, expression on his face. 

“It would not have been tomorrow, or in a month, or even in a year,” he said, as if Geralt’s reaction was confusing to him. “But in several years and if all of Elianna’s plans came to fruition, Angared married to Cirilla, perhaps a child, me dead or sidelined, Cirilla alone and isolated and without power, it would become simpler to discreetly remove her. It is a remote future, and Elianna has faltered at the second step, but that is a future I work to ensure will never come to pass.” On the desk, one of his hands clenched tightly, but no other emotion came through his still facade. 

“You’re the one walking her into this nest of vipers,” Geralt said, expecting Emhyr to snap at him, but he only shook his head.

“This is the path she has chosen. She cannot step away from it. Her face and name are known everywhere. Could she sink into the anonymity of the witcher’s Path so easily now? And even if she could, how would she feel to walk in the blood and muck of the worst of humanity, knowing she could have it stopped with a sweep of her hand? Why would she cut necrophages back from a man’s corpse, when she could prevent the war that kills him and starve them from the root? I have offered her a sword that reaches the length of the Continent. She must train in its use. You know as well as I that a sword poorly wielded can cut the owner as deeply as the enemy.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. He could see the reason in that, in its own way. And Emhyr was right about one thing; this was Ciri’s choice. 

Emhyr didn’t seem to want a response. He turned back to his work, and moments later Mererid and a cloud of maids descended on the suite with food and drink, the table by the window set for three with a flurry of activity. Geralt heard Ciri before he saw her, her quick step in the hall outside the door, and then the door popped open and she strode in, in all black aside from the golden necklace around her neck. 

“Thank you Mererid,” she said, as they were all sitting down. Mererid smiled faintly as he bowed, and then slipped out of the room. She looked at Emhyr. “I heard you found the ghost. Something to do with Ser Kelan?”

“Yes,” Emhyr said, pouring wine for himself. The food was more of the mix of Northern and Nilfgaardian foods Geralt had been served at lunch and he dug in quickly. He hadn’t eaten this well for months. “Ser Kelan was using a common charlatan’s trick to make a portrait of Pavetta appear as a ghost.”

“Seems a small thing to hang him for,” Ciri said mildly. Geralt looked up from his food. 

“He also killed seven Temerians,” he said. “To make the wraiths.”

Ciri grimaced. “Nasty,” she said, starting to cut her food up. 

“Quite,” Emhyr said. “How did you find Angarad var Cynfir?”

Ciri didn’t even blink at the change of subject, just chewed for a moment, a thoughtful expression on her face. 

“He’s not stupid,” she said, propping her chin on her hand. “He figured out quickly I didn’t want to talk about the fashion back in Nilfgaard. But he couldn't figure out what I _did_ want to talk about." She paused, her face considering. "Morvran figured it out much faster."

"What do you and Morvran discuss?" Emhyr asked, his sharp eyes watching Ciri closely. 

"Usually he brings a report and a map from one of his battles, and we argue about how it could have gone better," she said, digging into her food. 

“Hmm,” Emhyr said, and he sounded pleased, although Geralt had no idea why. “What battle did you cover most recently?”

“The Hakonen Uprising,” Ciri said. Emhyr chuckled. 

“Morvran was no more than ten during the Hakonen Uprising,” he said. “If he has been claiming that battle, you should remind him that lying to the new Empress is a poor tactic.”

Ciri smiled. “We ran out of his battles, so we’ve started on yours,” she said. “I said you should have put archers on the hill on the left flank.” 

Emhyr raised his eyebrows. “The lack of archers on the left flank was a deliberate tactic to draw the Hakonen cavalry into an uphill charge. Morvran should know that.”

“He said,” Ciri said. “Apparently I have a lot to learn about battle tactics.”

“You should tell him some of your kills,” Geralt said, sipping his wine. “Morvran’ll know all the fancy battle tactics, but I bet he’s never fought a werewolf.”

“He would generally have had other people to fight his cursed beasts for him, yes,” Emhyr said, his tone heavy with irony. 

“Fighting a werewolf requires plenty of tactics,” Geralt pointed out. “They’re big, they’re fast, they heal like the devil. You need to know what you’re doing.”

“That Wolf King in Velen was nasty,” Ciri said. “I suppose I could tell him about it.”

She looked at Emhyr, and he smiled faintly. 

“Morvran marches on Tretogor at the end of the week. It would do him some good to understand facing unpredictable foes,” he said. That was apparently an endorsement, and Ciri smiled happily. 

After a moment of silent eating, Emhyr picking at the food without interest, Ciri put her wine glass down. 

“If Morvran’s going to Tretogor, does that mean the court is going to Nilfgaard?” she asked. Emhyr nodded. 

“I will ask the court augurers to confirm it officially tomorrow,” he said. “But the reason for their reticence has been removed. No ghost haunts the palace. I anticipate we will leave in a week or so.”

“And the painting?” Ciri asked. Emhyr looked surprised for a second. 

“Pavetta’s portrait will come to Nilfgaard, to hang in the official Imperial gallery, next to my official portrait,” he said. “When you are confirmed as the Empress-To-Be, your own portrait will be commissioned, and it will also hang there.”

“I haven’t seen your official portrait,” Ciri said. Emhyr sipped his wine, and swallowed. 

“It was done when I was a younger man,” he said. “Shortly after the death of the Usurper.”

“And my mother,” Ciri said quietly. Emhyr paused, and then nodded, his face serious. 

“Yes,” he said. “And also your mother.” He toyed with the stem of his wine glass for a moment, and then looked up, his eyes flinty. “Cirilla, it is important you know - I - your mother.” He paused, his jaw working in momentary frustration. 

Geralt stood, filling his wine glass nearly to the rim from the decanter, and taking it from the table. 

“That’s my cue to step outside,” he said. He looked at Emhyr. “She doesn’t care. Just spit it out.”

Emhyr reared back, his shock and offense showing on his face, but Geralt just took the wine and went for the door to the garden. He winked at Ciri on the way, his back to Emhyr, and she hid her smile behind her wine glass. 

Outside, he let the solid wooden door close behind him, and walked further out into the garden, determined not to listen in. He had made his decision, as had Ciri. He wouldn’t hide her from Emhyr, wouldn’t help her run, wouldn’t try to come between them. He’d had the gift of Ciri at his side, the most trusted person in his life, the person he owned his and Yen’s life to multiple times over, the daughter they had wished for but never looked for. It was like a fairytale, not one of Emhyr’s educational ones, but the tragic ones, of the old man and woman who wished for a child to ease their troubles and had a magical child walk out of the forest. Well, it was time for their magical child to become a queen, to walk back into the forest, on the path she had chosen. 

He drank his wine, looking at the dark corners of the garden. He recognised some of them, yellow celandine and beggartick, white arenaria, the flowers curled up in the dark evening. The rest must have been decorative only. He had no need for the names of flowers that weren’t ingredients, and had never learned them. 

The wine was good. Every wine he’d drank with Emhyr had been good. In the distance, he heard an owl hoot, distant and eerie. The common folk said it was a bad omen, but Geralt had slept under the stars, listening to owls calling to each other, too many times to think it was anything else than just that: birds speaking to each other in their own way. 

His glass was nearly finished when the door to Emhyr’s rooms opened, the warm light of the candles and lanterns spilling out into the dark. Ciri was silhouetted in the light, a glass in hand, and she stepped out onto the stone terrace.

“Geralt?” she asked. He stopped out of the shadows, and came to stand beside her. 

“You and Emhyr talk?” he asked, draining his wine glass and setting it on one of the window sills. She nodded. 

“Yeah,” she said, swirling her glass. It was less than half full . “I think it means more to him than it does to me. Talking about Pavetta, I mean.”

Geralt looked across at her. She looked thoughtful, a serious line between her eyes. 

“You didn’t want to see her? Your mother?” he said. “You sounded like you wanted her to be back, when Emhyr told you about her.”

Cirilla shrugged. “I never really knew her. She’s my blood, and the reason I have my powers. And I’m grateful. But I don’t remember her.” She looked up at Geralt, the little light that came through the window casting over her eyes. She had Emhyr’s eyes. “She didn’t raise me. I thought about it and, well, I had you and Yennefer for that.” 

Geralt swallowed against the surge of emotion. Ciri watched him, her expression fond. 

“They'll write my name in the Book of the Sun as Cirilla var Emreis but I'll know: I'm the daughter of Yennefer of Vengerberg and Geralt of Rivia,” she said, and turned to put her glass down. Geralt was grateful for the second to blink, and then Ciri wrapped her arms around him. Even now, the crown of her head only came to his nose. 

“I’m proud of you, little swallow,” he said into her hair, holding her tightly for a second. She smelled as she always had, blade oil and steel and herself. She leaned back and smiled up at him. 

“Good night Geralt,” she said, reaching on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, and then she slipped back through the door, into the palace. 

The owl hooted again in the distance. It wasn’t cold, but without Ciri he was just standing in the dark for no reason. On the other side of the door was Emhyr, and more of Emhyr’s good wine. He went in. 

Ciri had left. The candles had burned down low, and the light in Emhyr’s rooms was warm, deeply shadowed in the corners. Emhyr was still in his seat, looking at the dregs of wine in his glass, his posture relaxed. He looked up when Geralt came in, but didn’t try to wave him away.

“You were right,” Emhyr said, like he was admitting something. Geralt took his chair and sat, stretching his legs out, resting an arm on the table.

“I’m right a lot,” he said. “What about?”

Emhyr closed his eyes for a second, snorting silently in amusement, and then drained the last of his glass. 

“Cirilla,” he said. “She doesn’t care. It is all in the past to her.” He paused, and set his glass down. It looked delicate in his square hand, but each movement was careful, precise. He had a lot of control. 

“She’s young,” Geralt said. 

“I was not much older than her when I killed the Usurper,” Emhyr said. Geralt shook his head. 

“I didn’t say inexperienced. No offense to your rampage through the ranks of Nilfgaardian nobility but Ciri travelled between worlds, fought the Wild Hunt, battled with gods. She faced the White Frost alone. She’s not a fool Emhyr, and she knows how to work hard. I’m just saying she’s young and focused on the future.”

Emhyr sighed, and nodded. 

“I know,” he said, and then looked out the window, into the darkness, the light reflecting off the glass in the darkness of his pupils. The muscles in his neck corded, and he looked cast in marble. Geralt had never been to Nilfgaard, but he had heard stories. There was supposed to be a statue of Emhyr at the steps of the temple of the Black Sun, and Geralt imagined it must have looked like Emhyr did now, serious and silent. “I forget, I think, that she did not really know Pavetta. And all these years I have thought of her primarily as Pavetta’s child.” He swallowed, and maybe it was the fact that they were alone, or the encroaching darkness, but something let him go on, although Geralt could see it was a difficult subject for him. “She was my first and most painful failure.”

Geralt didn’t know whether he meant Pavetta or Ciri - his queen that had died, or his child he had left behind. Neither of them said anything for a long time, as the candles guttered at the ends of their wicks, the remains of the dinner on the table between them. Geralt found all silences rich; his senses rose to fill the gaps of attention, and he could hear Emhyr breathing, and his eyes followed the rise and fall of his chest, the rich smell of the food and wine rising to his nose, with the undertone of Emhyr’s human body, blood and sweat and meat, under it all. 

“I still don’t understand one thing,” Geralt said eventually, thinking over the events of the past days. Emhyr looked back at him, raising his eyebrows. “About this contract,” Geralt clarified. 

“Hmm?” Emhyr said curiously. “I would have thought we fairly comprehensively determined the culprit, and resolved the matter.”

“Yeah,” Geralt said. “But I still don’t understand how you were so sure the ghost was fake. Right from the beginning.”

For a while, Emhyr didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look away. He just looked across at Geralt, like he was considering something. Geralt’s skin prickled under his regard. He could nearly _feel_ he was being looked at, and measured in the steel scales of Emhyr’s mind. 

“Perhaps it was my ignorance on the nature of spirits,” he said finally. “But I believed that only those who had been killed by violence or pain or some other suffering could haunt the living. Pavetta’s death was not violent or painful. She was taken before her time, but it was nothing more than the cruel hand of chance, which haunts the lives of every mortal. There was no malice or evil in her death, only the randomness of fate. I did not kill Pavetta.”

“I didn’t think you did,” Geralt said. He hadn’t particularly thought about it before. But it would have been impossible to listen to Emhyr the last few days and think he had killed Pavetta, like disposing of a tool that wasn’t useful anymore. Emhyr smiled ironically. 

“Then you are among limited company,” he said. “I do not think even Cirilla would swear I had no hand in it.”

“I’ve seen a lot of ghosts come back to haunt their killers,” Geralt said. “It’s a hazard of the profession. I saw your face when you saw Pavetta. That wasn’t a man looking at the woman he’d killed.”

Emhyr looked down, and the lines at the corners of his mouth seemed heavier, as if emotion dragged them down. 

“I am sure there are many reasons her spirit may have to judge me, and if there is an afterlife, I will answer for them then,” he said, and then looked up to meet Geralt’s gaze. “But I was certain Pavetta had not come to haunt me in the world of the living. She has been at rest for these last twenty years, and it was gruesome for Kelan to dangle her image before those who had loved her.”

He swallowed slowly, and then stood, walking to the window by the open door to his bedroom. There was nothing to see outside, at least not with human eyesight, but Emhyr stared hard at the window for a moment, his hands braced on the sill, the shape of his shoulders rising up under the fabric of his robe.

“I had thought that moving on from her, laying my grief to rest, was doing her a disservice. But I see now it was little better than Kelan’s obsession. I do her a disservice, to chain myself to her memory. She is free and so am I,” he said. 

“Hmm,” Geralt said. “Free how?”

Emhyr turned, and there was something different in his expression, something Geralt hadn’t seen in his face before. He knew it must be intentional, Emhyr so carefully controlled everything he did. 

“Free to see clearly someone who holds my daughter in their affections, who has been honourable and fair in the pursuit of justice, who would not accept me for personal gain or avarice nor reject me from prejudice,” he paused, and then said ruefully “It is a new experience for me.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said, for want of anything better to say. Emhyr snorted under his breath, and then raised his eyebrows, the same expression he made just before he made one of his quick, dryly funny comments. 

“Will you come to my bed tonight?” he said. 

Geralt was suddenly glad he wasn’t drinking anything, otherwise he might have spat it out. 

“Why am I coming to your bed? You don’t want to come to mine?” he said, stalling for time. He had no idea what the expression on his face looked like. Emhyr looked like he might laugh. 

“Because my bed is twenty paces away, and I am the emperor of the known world,” Emhyr said dryly. 

Geralt crossed his arms. 

“The emperor of the known world couldn’t get rid of one fake ghost without a lowly witcher,” he retorted, his pride a little provoked. 

Emhyr sighed. “You can continue to pretend to be merely a lowly member of your guild, content to walk your Path until death, but we both know that is not the truth. Your hands have shaped the destiny of this world, as much as mine or Cirilla or Yennefer of Vengerberg.”

Geralt used the toe of his boot to rock his chair back, considering Emhyr. Annoyed, he wasn’t as aware of being watched as he normally was and Geralt could look at his face in rest. He was handsome, in the way of a man who was rich and well looked after but who worked hard and did not let himself go to seed. A man who held himself in his own firmly controlled grasp. 

“Don’t let Yen hear you compare yourself to her, it’ll go to her head,” Geralt said. 

“Yennefer is a powerful sorceress of over a century of experience,” Emhyr said. “She has had ample time to make her mark on this world. I have had but one human lifetime. Our equality is my superiority.”

Geralt snorted. Emhyr certainly didn’t have a low opinion of himself, but he’d known that already. Emhyr met his gaze and didn’t look away. 

“You have not given me your answer,” he said. Geralt considered him for a moment. He didn’t look nervous, but his jaw was a little tighter than normal. Maybe he was nervous. Emperors probably didn’t have to ask twice very often. Geralt shrugged.

“Oh hell, sure,” he said, and pushed himself out of his chair. 

He expected Emhyr to move on him then, but he only looked at him briefly and then swept around, his robe moving out behind him, and strode through the door to his bedroom. 

“Come,” he said authoritatively and Geralt didn’t even think to argue, just followed him through the doorway and into Emhyr’s bedroom. Emhyr was already undressing, dropping his robe onto a dressing screen. His shirt underneath was dyed a deep black, only his cuffs picked out in gold thread. The robe had covered up a lot, and Geralt looked his fill, taking in Emhyr’s broad chest, the shadow of chest hair in the v of his shirt, the shape of his hips that had always been hidden. 

“Do you intend to linger in the doorway for the rest of the evening?” Emhyr said, looking up from unbuttoning his cuffs. Geralt smiled. 

“Have you even slept with a man before?” he asked, leaning against the door frame. Emhyr pulled his shirt over his head, and dropped it on the dressing screen. He had flat brown nipples, and the softness at his middle that came with age. Geralt could smell the sweat and oil of his skin, and swallowed, enjoying the view and the sensation of warmth that came from knowing he was about to have a great lay. He’d have put money on it. Emhyr didn’t commit himself to anything he wasn’t good at. 

Emhyr looked at him, unimpressed. 

“I have not had a woman in my bed since I left Cintra,” he said. “Cirilla was my heir, but her status was uncertain. I could not risk a child born in Nilfgaard displacing her.”

Geralt turned that over in his head, since Emhyr apparently couldn’t give him a straight answer. 

“You’re saying you’ve only fucked men since Pavetta died?” he asked, taking a step into the room, towards Emhyr who stood totally at ease, his hands relaxed and at his sides. He didn’t move when Geralt came closer, even though Emhyr _knew_ how fast, how dangerous, how vicious Geralt could be. Geralt could have smelled it if he’d been afraid, or nervous, but instead confidence, surety, rolled off him in waves, not a scent but a sensation, the world that Emhyr projected out from himself at all times. 

“I did not invite you here to quiz me,” Emhyr said. Geralt looked at him, close enough he could see the flecks of colour in his eyes. 

“Oh yeah?” he said, letting himself smile slowly. Yennefer would have called it a smirk. “What did--”

Emhyr didn’t give him the time to finish his question, just reached out and grabbed Geralt by the back of the neck, not fast enough to take Geralt truly by surprise but still firm and commanding, and then they were kissing, Emhyr’s grip on his neck holding him in place while Emhyr kissed him, warm and forceful, no hesitation. 

Geralt opened his mouth to it, letting Emhyr push him down to sit on the bed, already working on the buttons of his own cuffs. Apparently they were done talking. Geralt could feel the heat of Emhyr’s skin through the material of his shirt, feel the firm pressure of his hand at his neck, and it made him want more. 

Emhyr broke the kiss with a gasp, pulling away even though his expression was hungry and intent. 

“If you are done needling me,” he said, pulling in a deep breath of air, his chest rising and falling pleasingly. “Take off your clothes.”

Geralt pulled his shirt over his head, and threw it on the ground. 

“Are you going to be as insufferable as usual in bed as well?” he asked. Emhyr stepped back, and looked pointedly at the buttons of Geralt’s trousers. His expression made Geralt want to show off, to lean back and be looked at. 

“Disoblige me, and you will discover how insufferable I can be,” Emhyr said, his voice a low burr. Geralt grinned, and put a hand on his own thigh, his fingers touching the buttons of his trousers. 

“You’re not giving me a lot of incentive,” he said. He could feel his own skin heating up, both to the challenge of Emhyr’s bickering, and to Emhyr’s body, his broad shoulders. His cock was hardening, and he could feel it against his hand. Emhyr could surely see it. 

Emhyr looked at him, his eyes heavy-lidded. Geralt had the sensation of waiting for a snake to strike, like Emhyr was considering his weak spots and was about to lunge for his jugular. 

He wasn’t wrong. Emhyr stepped in close, his knees touching the bed, pushing Geralt’s legs apart, and he reached quickly for Geralt’s neck. Geralt thought he was going to kiss him again, with the firm grip on his neck, and his lips parted in anticipation. But Emhyr grabbed the hair at his neck hard and pulled his head back, Geralt’s scalp stinging brightly, leaning in close. 

“You will come while I fuck you,” Emhyr said, so calmly it was eerie. “Is that incentive enough?”

Geralt surged up, kissing Emhyr fiercely, the pull at his hair a delicious pain, and then neither of them were talking, just gasping and growling into the kiss, breath hot. Emhyr’s hands were holding Geralt shoulders, pulling at his hair, scratching his back, the nails bumping over the lines of scars, but Geralt only had the focus to kiss and wrestle his trousers open and down his thighs, and then Emhyr shoved him back on the bed and started on his own trousers, watching Geralt’s very undignified undressing like it was all he wanted to look at. 

Geralt was watching Emhyr’s hands instead, his thumb pushing the button aside and then he stepped out of his trousers and drawers in a neat, elegant movement, nothing like Geralt kicking his clothes off the bed, flopping back on to the ridiculously huge bed naked, his dick hard and curving upwards. He put one hand behind his head and the other on his own thigh, looking up at Emhyr. 

“Like what you see?” he asked, letting himself lick his lips. Emhyr looked even better naked. He had thick thighs, the kind of muscle that came from years of work in the saddle and practice courts, and his cock was thick and getting thicker as he touched himself, his closed fist moving slowly, almost leisurely. 

“I do not intend merely to look,” Emhyr said, his voice barely changing even as he stroked himself. “There is oil beside the lantern.”

Geralt thought about protesting, since that wasn’t a question, or even an order, but Emhyr was just standing there, watching him, like it was Geralt’s decision if he wanted it or not, nothing he did was going to disturb Emhyr’s perfect iron control. He rolled over and reached up to the cabinet beside the bed, where a lantern was lit, and beside it a jar of oil. He cracked the lid, and smelled olives and herbs he knew well, buckthorn, celandine, the glass of the jar warm from the light of the lantern. 

He rolled back over, and Emhyr had put a knee up on the bed. He reached out for the jar, and took it from Geralt, dipping his fingers into the oil. They dripped as he removed them and turned the lid back on the jar. Geralt watched a drop of oil roll down Emhyr’s wrist and arm to collect in the join of his elbow. 

“I don’t need a lot of that, you know,” Geralt said casually, tucking one hand behind his head to watch Emhyr move closer. He let his legs fall open, making space, and then Emhyr put a clean hand on his knee, pushing it further apart until Geralt was folding his leg back, exposing himself. 

“I will decide that, I think,” Emhyr said, and Geralt shivered all over. Emhyr was going to do whatever he wanted and Geralt was going to take it, because he wanted it. “Breathe,” Emhyr said, in the snapping tone of voice that meant he thought it was a command, and put his oiled fingers at the opening of Geralt’s arsehole, pushing gently. 

“You don’t have to be gentle with me-” Geralt said impatiently, and Emhyr pushed both fingers into him, cutting off the rest of Geralt’s complaining. 

“I am not being gentle with you,” Emhyr said, not giving Geralt any time to relax, setting in to fuck him with slow, hard pushes of his shoulder, pushing and then pulling the whole length of his fingers in and out. Geralt stopped trying to watch Emhyr’s face, and let his head fall back, just staring at the ceiling, feeling it all. He could nearly sink into it, the pressure, the release, his body opening up to Emhyr, Emhyr taking what he wanted. 

“Fuck,” Geralt said to the ceiling, Emhyr’s hand in the join of his knee holding his leg against his chest, Emhyr’s fingers curling up inside him, rubbing hard and persistent. They didn’t feel big, but Emhyr wasn’t letting that slow him down. Emhyr hadn’t even _touched_ his dick, but it was hard and curled up to touch his stomach, and Geralt wanted to push back onto the pressure of Emhyr’s fingers.

He grabbed his dick, warm and thick in his hand, intending to jerk himself until he came. He could do two or three in one night without breaking a sweat, so it wouldn’t slow him down, but Emhyr grabbed his wrist and pulled it away. 

“I said you’d come when I fucked you,” he said intently. Geralt dropped his head back and groaned loudly, half frustration and half that Emhyr had hooked his fingers around the rim of his arsehole, like he was holding a place in a goddamn book, and it felt too good. 

“Well, hurry up then,” Geralt growled. Emhyr dropped his wrist, and laughed, sliding his fingers around the rim of his arsehole, like he was playing with him. 

“I thought witcher stamina was legendary,” Emhyr said, his voice full of humour. Geralt curled his neck up to glare at him. 

“We’re also supposed to be violent maniacs,” he said, trying to put as much growl into his voice as he could. Emhyr sat back on his heels, leaving the tips of his fingers inside Geralt as a maddening tease, opening the jar of oil and slicking his cock one-handed which Geralt would have thought was impressive if it wasn’t delaying him getting to come. Emhyr lined himself up, and Geralt watched him take a split second to breathe, like he was composing himself. 

Geralt smirked. He could give as good as he got. He curled up, his stomach muscles working, and grabbed Emhyr by the shoulder, wrapping his leg around the back of Emhyr’s leg to dig his heel into the place where Emhyr’s leg met his arse, and then pulled with both, hard. 

Just like he’d intended, Emhyr grunted in surprise, and then his big dick pushed past the resistance of Geralt’s body and filled him up, shocking and good all at once. He clenched down, just to feel how good it felt, how thick Emhyr was inside him and how full he felt. This was what he’d wanted - the full force of Emhyr’s body, yes, but also Emhyr over him, breathing hard and holding onto his control by a slender thread, smelling the rolling warmth of his arousal. When he turned his head and bit at Emhyr’s arm, braced against the bed above his shoulder, he could taste the salty burst of his sweat. 

“C’mon,” he said, smirking up at Emhyr’s tight grimace. “Put your back into it, your grace.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Emhyr took a single deep breath, and the iron core of his control returned, settling down over him like a cloak. He leaned back, and grabbed at Geralt’s thighs, pulling him bodily down against his hips, holding him tightly, and then _put his back into it._

He fucked Geralt hard, perfect deep thrusts, no pauses to let him adjust, just fucking him again and again, their skin slapping and both of them breathing hard. Geralt didn’t have the breath to make a smart remark, and then he didn’t even want to, he only wanted to brace himself against the bed’s ridiculous headboard and push back into each thrust, his cock bouncing with the force. He felt hollowed out, like each thrust was opening a new space inside him, sparking along his skin like a sunburn or magic, hot and cold at once. It was just him and Emhyr inside his body, nothing else but the sensation of wanting, of yearning, his whole body a string pulled tight. He was grunting at the deepest point of each thrust now, the sound pushed out of him, and each outward pull made him gasp and whine, desperate to be filled again. He wanted to beg, but his brain didn’t have words anymore. He couldn’t have talked if Emhyr had ordered him. 

Emhyr shook his head, his jaw clenched tight, and let go of one Geralt’s leg, still keeping up the punishing pace. Geralt whined in the back of his throat, not caring how it sounded, because he wanted Emhyr to touch him, to hold his cock tightly and finally let him release, but he didn’t touch Geralt’s cock at all. Instead, he ran a hand over Geralt’s balls, rolling them firmly in his hand, not being gentle or careful with him at all, and then met Geralt’s gaze intently. 

“You may come when it pleases you,” he said, the effect a little ruined by how he had to say it through clenched teeth. Geralt groaned in frustration, because he wanted to come, his whole body was singing with it, he was so close and yet just on the edge, not quite there. Emhyr smiled. It was too devious to be a grin. Then he pressed two of his knuckles, curled to make a firm edge, hard up against the skin behind Geralt’s balls. Emhyr moved his hand in a persistent sweep, back and forth, and Geralt’s whole body shook, the sensation of being squeezed through an opening too small, like water from a waterskin. It came over him like that, Emhyr still fucking him without pause, pushing in even as Geralt’s clenched down and came, his cock spurting and jerking over his stomach, as high as his nipples, every muscle in his body going lax. 

Geralt blinked at the ceiling. For a moment, it felt like everything was happening far away, and then he came back to his body and Emhyr’s rhythm broke, his hips stuttering and he came as well, his cock pulsing inside Geralt. 

For a second, neither of them moved, Emhyr bent over and breathing hard while Geralt flexed his legs, feeling the stretch where he’d held them bent, and then Emhyr pulled back and lay on his side next to Geralt, looking smug. Geralt couldn’t even accuse him of undeserved smugness. It was very deserved. 

“Motherless dragons of a whore,” Geralt said, both his legs finally relaxing. He could feel Emhyr’s come on the inside of his thighs, and the uncomfortable but thrilling feeling of it leaking out of him. 

“Do whores usually have many dragons?” Emhyr asked curiously, looking down at him. Geralt gave him an unimpressed look. 

“It’s a saying,” he said. Emhyr hummed, and ran a hand over Geralt’s chest, his flat palm skimming the muscle and scars. 

“I assume it’s a positive commentary,” he said. Geralt rolled on his side, and looked at Emhyr. 

“You don’t need me to stroke your ego,” he said dryly. Emhyr nearly smiled at that, and his hand went lower, until he was stroking Geralt’s cock lightly. Geralt was still hard. 

“I assume this is what the stories of witcher stamina are referring to,” Emhyr said, still smiling. 

“Maybe not this - ah - specifically,” Geralt said, a little breathless as Emhyr’s grip tightened. Just because he could come again straight away didn’t mean he wasn’t sensitive. 

“It must create a few opportunities,” Emhyr said, pulling back a little so only the tips of his fingers were sliding Geralt’s foreskin back and forth, a slow tease that made the skin rise up on his arms.

“A couple,” Geralt said, trying and failing not to sound strangled. 

“Hmm,” Emhyr said, considering, and Geralt knew Emhyr’d had an idea. He didn’t know whether to be excited or worried. Emhyr sat up, his back against the headboard. “Come here.”

Geralt groaned. He hadn’t finished recovering. There was still come all over him, for a start. He thought fucking the emperor meant it would be clean. He’d had the vague idea it would be relaxing as well. He thought kings and emperors fucked to the music of bards, proclaiming their love and affection and other nonsense Dandelion thought sold well. Emhyr fucked like he was getting paid for good service. 

Emhyr raised his eyebrows. “Do you think I will not make it worth your while?” he asked. Geralt rolled his eyes. He know the fucking answer, he was just asking Geralt to prove a point. 

“No,” Geralt said grudgingly. He pushed himself up onto his knees, and swung a leg over Emhyr’s lap, not caring about the mess he made. Emhyr could stand to get a little messy. 

They were close enough Geralt could see the faint colour where Emhyr’s stubble would come through in a couple of days. The room was warm enough neither of them were cold, even naked, and Emhyr looked as relaxed undressed as he ever looked clothed, even with his cock soft and spent against his thigh. It wasn’t a bad view. 

Emhyr gripped Geralt’s hip in one hand, the other hand reaching between his legs and rubbing against his arsehole where he was still wet and tacky with come. Two fingers probed at his entrance softly, and then stopped. 

“You may move as you please,” Emhyr said, and Geralt groaned in defeat. He was raw and sensitive, even the friction of Emhyr’s fingers rubbing against him was maddening, but he wanted it all the same. He grabbed the thick wood of the headboard to give himself leverage, and bore down, sinking onto Emhyr’s fingers with a long groan. It wasn’t a stretch at all, but the friction was like being scratched or having his hair pulled, painful but good. 

He let his eyes slide closed, holding onto the bed and rocking his hips. Emhyr’s control was good for something, he didn’t move at all as Geralt rode his hand, just held Geralt’s hip firmly in one hand and, as they found a rhythm, pushed his fingers up every time Geralt came down. The second time always went quicker than the first, Geralt could feel his balls drawing up tightly, his hole clenching and releasing as the pressure built inside him. 

“Fuck, Melitele’s tits, give me another,” he spat, his hands white-knuckled on the headboard. He wanted to come, and two fingers wasn’t enough. Emhyr didn’t argue with him, just tucked a third finger into his other two, and let the weight of Geralt’s body push them in. The feeling crackled up Geralt’s spine. It was hard to hold his head up. His cock was so hard the head touched his stomach, bouncing with every thrust and movement of his body, a thick drop of fluid leaking from the tip. He groaned, his voice catching at the end. 

“Another?” Emhyr asked, so gently it made Geralt furious. A fourth finger rubbed gently against his other fingers, slipping in easily. It felt easy, and then Emhyr shifted his fingers, spreading them wider and Geralt had to grit his teeth and groan. It felt so good, and also too much. 

“Yes, yes,” he said, pushing his hips down harder, chasing the thudding feeling of fullness. Emhyr was watching him, the sensation of his regard as powerful as the four fingers inside him. He wasn’t falling apart like Geralt was, he was watching Geralt coolly, his expression fascinated but not overcome. He moved his hand with Geralt’s body, in time to the rhythm of his thrusts, and spread his fingers to make Geralt feel the size and stretch of them. 

“Have you done that before?” Emhyr said idly, like he was only curious and it wasn’t affecting him at all even though Geralt could _smell_ the arousal coming off him. The tip of his thumb probed at the sensitive skin of Geralt’s arsehole, like he wanted to slip it inside him and fill him with the whole fist of his hand. “Taken an entire hand I mean,” he continued, when Geralt only grunted, pushing his hips down onto the thick plug of Emhyr’s four fingers. 

“Yennefer has - ah,” Geralt said, as the lowest point of his thrust stretched him wider. “Smaller hands.”

“Hmm,” Emhyr said, and he looked up at Geralt’s face. He was flushed red, but his eyes had lost none of their focus. “It is an idea we will have to explore.”

Fuck, the idea and the image was intoxicating, Emhyr working Geralt open until he could slide his whole fist inside him. Emhyr wanted to try it. Geralt could only think about the widest point of Emhyr’s hand, his thick knuckles, and how they’d feel sliding past the tightness of his arsehole. 

Emhyr released his hip and grabbed one of Geralt’s hands by the wrist, pulling it from the headboard and pulling it to his cock, until they both had their fists around it, their hands overlapping. Geralt couldn’t lift his head up, couldn’t do anything more than watch their hands moving over his cock, moving his hips up and down out of inertia rather than consciousness, feeling himself reaching the peak. Even as it came over him, the feeling was sharp and raw, his body clenching down on Emhyr’s fingers, come dripping through him and Emhyr’s hands and onto Emhyr’s stomach. 

It got uncomfortable after a second and Emhyr, seeing his expression, removed his fingers slowly but surely, not drawing it out. They were both a mess but, Geralt thought, as he collapsed sideways on the bed, he’d made a good start towards getting Emhyr as messy as he was. He matched a little groggily as Emhyr stood to wipe his hands on a towel hanging on the dressing screen, and then returned to bed, come still drying on his stomach. 

Geralt put a hand behind his head, letting his eyes close. Emhyr could kick him out if he wanted, but it didn’t seem like he was about to. All things considered, this had been a relaxed contract, but he’d still had a full day and night without meditating or sleeping, and his ass was sore. He heard Emhyr sigh, and the bed rustle as he settled. 

“I think I figured something out about you, you know,” Geralt said, as a thought he’d been considering turned over in the back of his mind. Sex was always good for kicking over the loose stones of his thoughts. 

“I welcome your insight,” Emhyr said dryly, and when Geralt opened his eyes, he was looking up from a book in his lap, still naked. 

“You’re a romantic,” Geralt said, smiling. “I know you’re the emperor and ruthless and brilliant and all those other things,” he said, waving a hand vaguely. “But you’ve got a romantic streak a mile wide, don’t you?”

Emhyr didn’t look impressed. “I do not know what would lead you to that conclusion,” he said. Geralt raised his eyebrows. 

“Oh?” he said. “I bet you had eligible Nilfgaardian women throwing themselves at you for years, trying to become the new Empress. And you didn’t touch a single one of them, all to make sure your daughter, who could very possibly be dead, could be the next Empress and not someone else? You barely knew Ciri. She was what, five summers when you left Cintra? You wanted to make Pavetta’s child Empress, and you conquered the known world to make it happen. Sounds pretty romantic to me.”

Emhyr had closed his book, and was looking at Geralt strangely, like a rock troll had just sat up and recited poetry. Bemused and surprised but not angry. 

“Some would say desperate rather than romantic,” he said. Geralt shrugged. 

“You wanted to honour her memory,” he said. Geralt had seen a lot of crazy things done out of grief. Emhyr had potentially gone bigger than most, with three wars and multiple occupations, but he was an emperor. Geralt was used to the outsized ambitions of kings and emperors. 

Emhyr didn’t look convinced. 

“Perhaps I was determined to make up for my failure to make Pavetta my empress,” he said. “It has often been said that, if I have vices, it is my determination to see a plan succeed at any cost.”

Geralt rolled onto his side to prop his head up on his hand, and pull the wrinkled sheet over his hip. He examined Emhyr’s face, not sure what nerve he’d hit. Well, if Emhyr had wanted someone to lie to him he could have fucked a different witcher. 

“Did you really believe that would work?” Geralt asked. “I thought you were speaking rhetorically when you said it before.”

Emhyr was looking more and more bemused now. Geralt pressed on. 

“I mean, do you really mean you seriously meant to make Pavetta Empress of Nilfgaard? Because I can’t see a single way that would have worked.” 

Emhyr frowned deeply, the lines around his mouth hardening. 

“What do you mean?” he asked intently. 

“I didn’t know Pavetta, but I knew Calanthe,” Geralt said. “She wouldn’t have raised her daughter to love Nilfgaard.”

That seemed only the first and most obvious reason in a list of descending reasons why Pavetta, Princess of Cintra, daughter of the Elder Blood, would have objected to being abducted to Nilfgaard by her husband. Geralt hadn’t known her, but Calanthe had been a fierce, sometimes vicious, queen, sharper than her sword and as quick and deadly as an adder. Maybe Pavetta had been a different woman, but surely the apple couldn’t have fallen that far. 

Emhyr’s mouth tightened, and he wasn’t confused any more. He sagged back into the bed, looking up at the ceiling. Geralt could see a little of the young man who had emerged from that cursed hedgehog body, the way his hair fell back from his forehead. It did not seem so long ago, looking at Emhyr like this. 

“You really have a fascinating capacity to ferret out lies,” Emhyr said, with no rancor. Geralt shrugged. 

“Witcher nose,” he said, and Emhyr snorted. 

“I do not doubt you can smell more than I, but I would have to be very credulous to think you could smell out the lies I told myself as a young man,” he said. “You are right - Pavetta had no love for Nilfgaard. I would have had to rebuild my palace as a prison, to hold her. She would have hated me for my lies, and feared for her mother, who she knew would never surrender. She left Cirilla in Cintra, the day we left, because she feared my secrets.” His mouth twisted ruefully. “Pavetta was not Calanthe. She had no use for sword or steel or armies. But she was the daughter of a lioness, fierce in her own way.”

Emhyr pushed hair off his forehead, his fingers drawing soft lines in his black hair. It was no longer carefully pushed back, like Geralt had always seen it before, but now coming loose, falling over his ears. He looked at Geralt, but his eyes were soft, like he was thinking of the past. 

“I dreamed every day of my ascendance, of the moment when I would cast the Usurper out and see his blood spilt on the steps of the temple. But afterwards was always a blankness, an empty expanse I could not picture. I convinced myself Pavetta and Cirilla could join me, in that unknown future. It was the dream of a young man, who believed in victories untempered by failure. I know there is no such thing now.”

Geralt understood that feeling, of having fought and won and looking at the winnings, wondering what good they were with friends dead or missing, innocents suffering, the spectre of failure looking over your shoulder. He had made a lot of decisions he regretted in his life, but even the ones he didn’t sometimes tasted bitter with the price they’d come at. 

“What was she like?” Geralt asked. “Pavetta, I mean.”

The years after the child surprise, and the terrifying collision of his life with the forces of destiny, he had avoided Cintra like the plague, leaving the contracts there for other witchers. He’d only met Pavetta the once, the day of her engagement. So much had happened that night, he had only the vague impression of her, still only a girl, but beautiful and determined, arguing Duny’s case to her mother. 

Emhyr smiled, a rare pure smile, and his eyes closed for a moment. 

“She was very sharp,” he said, and, when he opened them, his eyes were bright, nearly twinkling. “She thought faster than anyone I have ever known. I had been in the wilderness for nearly ten years when I met her, and when we first spoke it was like civilisation had returned to me in one fell swoop.” He paused, and sighed, looking down at Geralt. “I sought Pavetta out because I was sure she would be able to release me from my curse. But I think you are familiar with the way destiny snares us in the ways we least expect. I loved her very fiercely.”

Geralt nodded. He was definitely familiar with all the ways destiny fucked with a person.

“My apologies,” Emhyr said, looking down to meet Geralt’s gaze. “It’s hardly etiquette to talk about past lovers in bed.”

Geralt shrugged. “I don’t care,” he said. It didn’t bother him. It seemed nonsensical to pretend Emhyr had no past. What was he going to do, feel jealous of a dead woman? Yennefer was actually alive, and Emhyr didn’t seem jealous of her. 

“Hmm,” Emhyr said. His gaze moved deliberately across Geralt’s chest, taking in the muscle and scars. Geralt resisted the urge to preen. Emhyr’s expression was approving enough without him trying to show off. He was still soft, twice was enough to sate him for a little while, but if he needed to he could easily go again. Emhyr didn’t seem like he wanted the evening to end. 

“The old royal manor, the seat of Foltest’s father - is it true you freed a striga there?” Emhyr asked, and Geralt blinked. He hadn’t expected the question, and couldn’t see how Emhyr had made the leap to it. 

“Sure,” he said. “Or well, I lifted the striga’s curse. No idea what happened to her after that. I suppose she probably died in the war.”

Emhyr looked at him coolly. “I am not in the business of easy mistakes, including not knowing where the children of my enemies find their ends,” he said. “Adda the White forsook her title, and became a devotee of the Maiden Under Waves. I believe she took a vow of silence.”

“Huh,” Geralt said. He probably should have known that. He couldn’t be expected to check up on every person he cured of a curse. He’d never sleep. He rolled over, turning his back to Emhyr, and reached around to put his fingers next to three wide scars under his shoulder blade. “She gave me these,” he said. “Broke two of my ribs as well.”

He felt Emhyr’s fingers against his, touching the scars. The claw marks were too wide for a human hand, and unnaturally long. Strigas were fast and vicious, and Geralt had felt the wounds for weeks afterwards. 

“Is there any truth in the rumour that the old manor is still haunted?” Emhyr asked. Geralt rolled back over, looking up at him curiously. 

“What?” he asked as he turned over. “No, I cured the striga. Cleaned out some ghouls and wraiths while I was at it. Shouldn’t be anything more than rats there now.”

“Hmm,” Emhyr said thoughtfully. “I was considering offering it to Vernon Roche, to ennoble him.”

Geralt’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “What, you want to make him a count or something?”

“I was thinking a duke actually,” Emhyr said. “It would put him at a similar rank to Anna Henrietta, which seems appropriate.”

“I thought she was your cousin,” Geralt said. Emhyr inclined his head, as serious and regal as he ever was, even with come flaking dry on his stomach. 

“She is, although only distantly. I’m sure I can find some suitably obscure ancestor of Commander Roche’s to claim a distant connection to the royal family of Temeria, and make him a duke.”

Geralt was doubtful, and let it show in his face. “His people farm beets,” he said. “I don’t know if any of them had ever left their village before Roche joined the army.”

Emhyr waved a hand. “It doesn’t have to be a true connection, merely a believable one. I assume he is serious about this council of citizens, in which case he will face considerable opposition from the remaining Temerian nobility, and the guild leaders. He will be more successful, and harder to kill, if he has a title, and my substantial endorsement. I have no desire to start over again with some fool of a Temerian baron, if Commander Roche ends up dead.”

“I suppose,” Geralt said slowly. He still couldn’t picture Roche, who he mostly knew covered in mud and eating rats in the Temerian woods, as a duke. 

“Will he accept it, if it’s offered?” Emhyr asked. Geralt considered it briefly. 

“He won’t take it if he thinks it’s to keep him beholden to you. He’s proud but he’s not stupid. If you explain all that, that you want the other Temerians to take him seriously, I think he’ll do it,” he said. 

Emhyr nodded. “I’ll offer it to him tomorrow,” he said, and then met Geralt’s eyes, his expression visibly changing from thoughtful to warm. “But it is not yet tomorrow, and I think we have unfinished business.” 

Geralt snorted. “Is that what you call it? Most humans are happy with twice,” he said, even as Emhyr leaned over him, their chests close enough to brush. Emhyr raised an eyebrow. 

“It has not been twice for me,” he said, and then one of his hands was in Geralt’s hair and they were kissing. Emhyr didn’t relax even when he was kissing, and he pushed Geralt back into the bed, each of his movements determined and firm. They smelled of nothing more than two bodies, sweat and come, and Geralt could taste on Emhyr’s tongue the last sharpness of the wine they’d drunk at dinner. They wrestled back and forth a little, managing a whole roll in Emhyr’s huge bed, the sheets tangling around their legs. They kissed, and Geralt scratched at Emhyr’s thighs, grinning when nails on the sensitive skin between his legs made him gasp. Emhyr pulled Geralt’s hair, and smiled like a cat who’d got the cream, smug and ridiculously attractive. 

Geralt shoved his thigh up between Emhyr’s legs, trying to get some leverage to turn them, even though Emhyr had a fistful of his hair and sparks were going off behind his eyes with how good it felt. He raised his eyebrows when he realised Emhyr was still soft, his cock barely stirring against Geralt’s thighs. 

“Bit off more than you can chew?” he asked dryly. Emhyr glared at him. 

“Oh, do you not appreciate the challenge?” he asked. Geralt wanted to bite him. He was already hard, not as desperate as he had been their first go round, but he didn’t need long to cool off between fucks. He and Yennefer hadn’t spent that summer in Aedirn fucking nonstop for nothing.

“Well, you’re not fucking me like that,” Geralt said practically, and, before Emhyr could suggest something else, rolled them over so Emhyr was on his side and fit himself up against his back, tucking his nose into the nape of Emhyr’s neck. He knew what he wanted. They’d had plenty of what Emhyr wanted, it was his turn. 

They were both big men. It was rare for Geralt to fuck anyone nearly the same height as him, and their bodies fit together well. He scraped his teeth over the thin skin on the back of Emhyr’s neck, liking the way he could smell Emhyr intensely like this, right up against him. 

“I fail to see how this has solved that,” Emhyr said doubtfully. Geralt bit him lightly, just a nip at his shoulder, and lifted Emhyr’s leg slightly, so he could slide his cock between Emhyr’s legs, and reach around at the same time, to hold Emhyr’s soft cock in his hand. 

“Like this,” he said, and used his hips to slide his cock back and forth, dragging a little on the skin of Emhyr’s thighs, nudging the back of his balls. Every time he moved it pushed Emhyr’s soft cock to fuck Geralt’s hand. Emhyr hissed loudly when Geralt gripped tighter, so he kept his hand loose, enjoying the soft, gentle feeling of Emhyr’s cock, still a little damp from earlier. 

Emhyr cottoned on pretty quickly. He felt around the bed until he found the jar of oil that they’d let roll away, and opened it so Geralt could rub it all over his cock and Emhyr’s thighs. He fucked Emhyr’s thighs for a long time in an easy steady rhythm, no hurry because Emhyr’s cock was still soft. Geralt could go like this for hours. Every time he thrust all the way in, Emhyr would exhale loudly, like Geralt’s cock pushing between his legs and thrusting against his balls was pushing the air out of him. It was a sweet, addictive sound, and Geralt found himself thrusting hard, just to hear the way Emhyr breathed out.

Emhyr flexed his thighs, tightening up his hard-earned muscle around Geralt’s cock and Geralt grunted, tucking his head a little to press his forehead between Emhyr’s shoulder blades. He could see the inch or so of his cock when he pulled back, and then could watch it sink back between Emhyr’s legs, into the soft warm of his oiled thighs. He lost track of time a little, fucking in time with Emhyr’s breathing, his pleasure a rolling wave rather than a steep climb.

Emhyr got hard in slow stages, his cock fattening up in Geralt’s hand until he was jerking Emhyr’s cock in time with his thrusts, and they were both breathing hard, Emhyr panting loudly like he was struggling to control each breath. They were both speeding up without realising, the slow pace tipping over into something more desperate, Emhyr pushing back onto Geralt’s cock, the warmed skin of their thighs hitting against each other noisily. 

The noise Emhyr made when he came was strangled, and so sudden it surprised Geralt, the cut off gasp and then Emhyr’s cock twitching in his hand, come spurting through his fingers and onto the sheets. The smell was thick in the air, and Geralt could feel himself reaching the peak, feeling it all, Emhyr’s skin under his mouth, the smell of come and oil and human sweat. 

“Ah, ah, ah,” Emhyr was saying, quietly and uncontrolled as Geralt fucked his thighs, his hand still on his rapidly softening cock. He must be sensitive, but Geralt didn’t want to stop, couldn’t stop, just on the edge, and then Emhyr’s legs flexed and that was it, he was gone, his cock jerking between Emhyr’s legs, covering them in come. 

“Fuck,” he said, through gritted teeth, and then rolled backwards, his hand leaving a damp trail on Emhyr’s hip. His chest was a little cold, without Emhyr’s warm back pressed against him, and he was glad when Emhyr also rolled towards him, his warm body against Geralt’s side. He closed his eyes for a second, and felt Emhyr hand moving his hair, not pulling or doing anything in particular, just moving the long strands back from his forehead. 

“Surely keeping it long is impractical,” Emhyr said. Geralt was still coming down from the orgasm, and hummed, turning his face towards the sound of Emhyr’s voice. Emhyr’s fingers in his hair stopped for a moment, and then started again. 

“Hasn’t killed me yet,” Geralt said vaguely, even though Emhyr was right, it was impractical. Eskel and Lambert both kept theirs short. But not everything had to be practical, and he’d been wearing it long since he’d started on the Path. He liked it. 

Emhyr snorted in amusement, and pushed the hair off Geralt’s face. His fingers stopped, and pulled away. Geralt opened his eyes. Emhyr was sitting up, looking into the distance, his hand resting near Geralt’s on one of the pillows. There was a warm flush all up his chest, like he’d been exerting himself. Geralt smiled. It was always good to see the results of hard work. 

“When does the court leave?” he asked, after they lay in silence for a few minutes. Emhyr flipped one of the sheets over their legs.

“The augurers will have to pick the most auspicious day,” he said, “but they know we must cross the Yaruga before winter truly arrives, to reach Nilfgaard before the winter solstice. I would anticipate the end of the week.”

“And then Ciri will be Empress,” Geralt said. 

“Technically the ceremony merely confirms she is my heir,” Emhyr said, “but I intend for her to rule alongside me before my abdication, so the distinction is academic. She will remain the Empress Apparent in title, and then become the Empress Regnant once I abdicate.” He paused, and then said, with humour. “She will be able to add it to the many titles she has accumulated on her own.”

“What do you mean?” Geralt asked. He didn’t really think of Ciri having titles. Servants wandering around calling her the Empress Apparent was weird enough. 

“Cirilla has had many names, which will all become her titles,” Emhyr said. “Zireael, the swallow, the lion cub of Cintra, the Lady of Space and Time. Now she will become the Black Sun Risen, as my sun sets.” 

Well, that was a dramatic way of putting it. Witchers didn’t retire, they mostly died with their boots on, but at least none of them ever called getting older their sun setting. 

“I take it not a lot of Nilfgaardian emperors retire,” Geralt said dryly. That seemed to break through Emhyr’s introspection, and he snorted. 

“No, there have not been many peaceful transitions of power in our history,” he said. His voice heavy with amusement. “I believe the last was my great-grandfather, Lachlann var Emreis.”

“What did he do?” Geralt asked. Emhyr looked down at him. 

“He retired to a small estate in Metinna and grew olives for the rest of his life. That seems to be the tradition, for the few emperors and kings of our history who have survived to retire. They purchase an estate in some distant part of the empire and devote themselves to study or farming.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. Emhyr didn’t sound enthused about the prospect. “I hear Toussaint is nice this time of year.”

Emhyr smiled slowly, like the idea of what Geralt was implying was just coming to him. 

“I have been told they have been recently much afflicted by vampires,” he said. Geralt grinned, showing all his teeth. 

“Good thing I cleaned those up for you,” he said. Emhyr nodded decisively. 

“I would give you something,” he said, and twisted to open a box on the cabinet beside the bed, the sounds of jewellery moving under his hand. When he turned back, he dropped a ring into Geralt’s open palm. 

It was a gold signet ring, the inset carving of the sun set with black opals. Geralt looked at it, and then looked up at Emhyr. 

“This won’t fit on my hand, you know,” he said. Emhyr dismissed that with a wave of his hand. 

“Then wear it on a chain around your neck, how you wear it is immaterial,” he said. “This is the imperial seal. It will give you free movement in all my domains, and, if you seek aid, any member of the Nilfgaardian Army will be honour bound to provide it.”

“Huh,” Geralt said, looking at the ring in a new light. It would be nice not to be stopped every time he tried to cross the Pontar. 

“I will not pretend that anything I offer could keep you,” Emhyr said. When Geralt looked at him, his expression was open and patient, just a man laying out facts he knew to be true. “You will walk your own path, and be jealous of it. Nor will I pretend we could keep each other, when there are others, living and dead, who keep us still.” He paused, and Geralt waited, letting him go on. “But it would gladden me, if you would not be a stranger to the places where I will go.”

Geralt thought about it for a moment. 

“Yeah, I think I could fit you into my busy schedule,” he said, and closed his fist around the ring.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a fic commentary and outtakes post [here](https://girlmarauders.dreamwidth.org/49468.html)
> 
> nalewka is a traditional polish herbal vodka
> 
> the “witcher fairy story” Geralt tells Emhyr is adapted for the witcher universe from [The Lore of Scotland by Westwood & Kingshill](https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-lore-of-scotland-a-guide-to-scottish-legends/9780099547167), a fantastic compendium of folklore and legends by two excellent folklorists.
> 
>  _each uisge_ (pronounced eck ush-ga) is the scots gaelic word for water-horse, sometimes called a kelpie. the elder speech in the witcher universe borrows from a few languages, including scots gaelic.


End file.
